The Knights of Scooby
by Perfect Lionheart
Summary: A passing mage, friend of the Rosenberg clan, stops by to check in on Willow as she graduates Junior High. Horrified, he attempts to leave her a protector by buffing up her best friend.
1. Chapter 1

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter One 

by Lionheart  
based on scene by Prince Charon

* * *

His clan were Gypsies, proud of their heritage. However, since the Nazis killed more gypsies than Jews during their reign of terror, their power in Europe had largely been broken. 

Vengeance was still owed for that.

With the power of the gypsies in decline, the remaining families had been forced to seek allies, and they had found them beside them in those same extermination camps. Found them, and died beside them. But among those few who had survived the alliances remained, and the bonds grew deep among those who still honored those treaties.

The Rosenberg family was a powerful and widespread clan of Cabalists, very valuable allies to the gypsies, but even among the strongest and wisest clans (which the Rosenbergs were not) there were always the rebellious few, the foolish, those who knew a little and constantly misapplied that knowledge.

One pair of those resided in Sunnydale California, the mouth of Hell itself.

The parents were perhaps less unwise in their foolish choice of location than some might suspect, spending very little time in their domicile, dropping by only to perform rituals drawing on that source of power, then getting back out of town, answering their fears of both known and unknown dangers.

But still that tremendously irresponsible couple, flirting with danger and daring the mouth of hell to bite them, had no excuse to expose their daughter to that kind of peril.

So many people who knew a little, and imagined they knew it all, caused such problems! Ignorance was no protection against demons! That applied only to Fey creatures, and you wouldn't find many of them on an active Hellmouth!

No, leaving their only daughter to dwell alongside demons and vampires with no knowledge to protect her was tantamount to murder. But the foolish pair insisted that they were right, and their elders were wrong, and so left Willow to fend for herself alone at one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

Inexcusable.

But, by the ancient rules, they were her parents and the rest of the clan could not go directly against their wishes concerning their child. That was absolute, and because of ancient laws they could not directly transgress it.

So, the mage had been asked by a much older and wiser member of the Rosenberg clan to look in on that foolish couple's daughter and see if anything could be done to improve her situation. And he had done so, taking time he could hardly spare and visiting under guise of wanting to see her Junior High graduation ceremony.

The lonely child had been pathetically grateful for the company and attention, furthering his disgust for the negligent treatment given her.

His report to her clan was her situation was desperate, just one more sheep among the fold, only the other sheep there to protect her from the wolves that hunted the night. It was only a matter of time before they found her a more convenient target than some others. That was all that was protecting her life now, other prey was still more convenient to the hunters.

But that would change next year as she entered High School.

The greater Rosenberg clan could do nothing, and her parents would not, stubbornly insisting on their misapplied belief that innocence and ignorance were a perfect shield that would serve to protect her more than adequately.

The stubborn fools.

There were comparatively few universally applied rules of magic, and that was not among them. If you wanted to play around in fairy courts innocence was indeed a near perfect shield. But the Fey were not destroyed by sunlight, either, nor was a line of salt sprinkled around your bed going to hold a major demon at bay. Different rules applied to different creatures, and to insist on treating one type as another was only courting death, like wearing perfect desert survival gear in the middle of an arctic wasteland, or winter gear on the bottom of an ocean, or scuba gear out in the middle of the blazing Sahara sun.

If it was only their own lives they were asking to be destroyed that would be one thing, but this... they left their daughter unprotected while spending practically no time in the danger zone themselves.

If they were members of his clan a Gypsy Curse would already be in effect on the negligent parents. Children were too precious by far to the vastly diminished clans to risk on such foolhardy games. But by the treaty he could not grant them the curse they so richly deserved, as it was not a member of his clan they were foolishly trying to destroy.

As the situation stood, this was a purely internal matter for the Rosenberg clan to deal with, and they could not respond appropriately because by those ancient laws parents had the right to decide the treatment of their children.

These parents were just being damn fools about how they did so.

However, though direct intervention was impossible, that did not mean that nothing could be done. By asking only that a friend from another, unrelated clan look in on her, the Rosenberg elder was already one step removed from direct intervention. It was an important step, but not enough for the gypsy mage to intervene by directly affecting Willow Rosenberg himself.

They could not ask that he do more, but the mage, having seen the need, was not about to stand back and do nothing. They could not ask, but he could volunteer. The trouble was he had no time to spare from his own projects, and to some extent, as an ally, he was bound by the same laws regarding the rights of the parents to decide the life of their child.

Not as tightly bound, however. So, while he could not snag the girl and drive her to a safe haven, as she deserved, he could intervene in her life so long as he did not do so directly.

That meant no granting her beneficial enchantments or magic weapons, no guardian spirits could be summoned to watch over her, and nothing could be said to the girl directly as that would go against the parents' directly stated wishes that she remain ignorant, and thus, in their minds at least, safe.

But he wasn't going to leave her unprotected, and so since he couldn't do it himself nor directly enable her to defend her own life, would do what he could to buff up the one person most likely to be there when she needed protection - her best friend.

Entering the Harris residence was depressingly easy. There were no wards at all, despite the house's proximity to the Hellmouth. Just a cheap lock that yielded to a simple opening charm. You would think that in a town as dangerous as this one some portion of the population would know how to protect themselves. But no, they were behaving like cattle, just walking bags of meat as far as the nightlife was concerned. There wasn't even a hero operating on the Hellmouth to reduce the danger, certainly nothing so simple and practical as a mage dispensing household wards.

You'd think that everyone who lived here was asking to get killed.

The mage set some of his own, but they were only temporary, and would fade after a week, at most. He felt some guilt for what he was about to do, but he could not remain on the Hellmouth, knew that he would not be able to convince the young girl's parents to take her to safety, and yet could not leave her entirely alone and unprepared for what was to come.

He stepped around the drunken and unconscious forms of Mr. and Mrs. Harris, casting Gentle Sleep spells upon them, to prevent them from interrupting his work, then, having researched all he needed to know before even entering the house, and able confirm by what he could see from their auras, followed that up with a curse.

A Vengeance Curse, a fairly minor one, but his clan specialized in those in all of their varieties, and from what he knew, bolstered by what he could see evidenced in their auras, they more than deserved it. So he cast it on behalf of their son, that they would remove their own ability to harm him, and try to do so in such a way as to restore to him equal value for as much of the damage they'd done to his life as possible.

Favor for favor. Balance was a key element of so much magic. Having done a good deed for the Harris boy, he could expect his spells to enable him as the Rosenberg girl's protector to be that much more effective.

The mage nodded, pleased with this effort, and entered the bedroom of the son, who was sleeping restlessly. The first spell that he cast on Xander did not so much rouse the young man from sleep, as waken him just enough to put him in a hypnotic trance, while the second would help in memorization.

Right, first thing's first.

"Xander Harris, you are not your father," said the mage. "You will not become your father, because you have chosen not to be, and your will is far greater than his could ever be. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Xander.

"You are a very intelligent young man, when you choose to think. You will do so as part of your regular routine from this point onward, and stop second guessing yourself without cause," said the mage. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Xander, again.

"Good," replied the mage. "I am going to do several things that you may find odd or distressing, but they will help you to keep your friends alive. You do want to protect them, don't you?"

"Yes," said Xander, with conviction.

"Excellent," said the mage, pulling a thick scroll from under his jacket. "You will start off by mastering this." He handed him the scroll, entitled 'Ars Memoriae', a definitive work on memory and the techniques of more efficient use of the human mind, oddly enough written by a long lived but not particularly strong telepathic demon who had found humans fascinating and studied them the way an entomologist studied insects.

It was, despite that, a very informative text, and one could never know the unusual origin of the author from the contents. This being the mage's own copy, he'd long ago had a friendly summon with an entirely different mental structure remove the traps that would have tried to entice a human reader to become an experimental subject of the now long-dead author.

In a trance, and with the memory spell helping, Xander was able to memorize the scroll in about a minute. He lowered it with a simple, "Done."

"Very good," the mage nodded, retrieving and rerolling his scroll. "Have you selected a memory palace?"

"Yes," the mesmerized teen stated blandly.

"Build it," the mage commanded, "Then order your mind."

The teen blinked once, a long, slow process while his pupils flitted about madly as if in high speed REM sleep. Then his eyes snapped open, filled with a clarity that has not been present before. "Done."

"Very good." The mage took a sheet of parchment from his pocket. "Now, I need you to memorize this chart of the major and minor chakras of the human body."

It took about a second for the young man to memorize and parse through all of the complex and exacting material, which was fortunate, given how many books they needed to go through.

Muttering a Latin incantation, the mage pulled a book from a pocket too small to hold it. "You should know that you are capable of casting spells, and you will learn that you are quite powerful. Some of the documents I will have you read and memorize will help with that," he said, and handed Xander the first book, Throckmorton's 'Annotated Codex of Magical Thought', a rather dry and pompous book, but otherwise an excellent introduction to magical theory, with a few simple spells to serve as examples.

While Xander was reading that book, the mage set up the laptop computer his niece had given him for his birthday. He wasn't sure of this 'Techno-Pagan' thing she was into, but it might help, and the worst it could do is waste a few minutes. As the laptop slowly booted up, Xander finish the 'Codex', and the next two books, which were mainly compilations of spells, with little theory, one of 'light' magic, the other of 'dark'.

Interestingly enough, it was the book of so-called 'dark' magic which contained healing spells, as in recent centuries most Western magic-users had labeled anything that 'disturbed the natural order' as dark, regardless of intent.

By the time Xander had finished the third book the laptop had booted up, and the mage had brought up the first of the Techno-Pagan files that his niece had downloaded to the computer. These files were shorter and more concise than the books, but took about as long to read, as some of them contained animated pictures that took several seconds to cycle through their sequence. One of the oddest documents, from the old mage's point of view, detailed the idea of 'Technomancy', combining enchantment and technology, to create the effects of fictional inventions.

When Xander finished reading those files he was presented with more books, starting with 'The Dao of Jeet Kune Do', by Bruce Lee, and then a treatise by a mahoutsukai (Japanese sorcerer) on combining magic and martial arts, and enchanting weapons and armour. These were followed by 'The Thirty-Six Strategies', Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War', and Musashi's 'A Book of Five Rings'. A few more books followed, mostly on the martial arts, finishing off with Van Hellsing's 'Journal on Practical Demonology', with an appendix of known errors, and the well respected but distressingly thin and incomplete 'Hunter's Encyclopedia of The Night'.

While he would have loved to include a sheet of paper listing the addresses of nearby magic shops, or even a few mail-order contacts, such was unwise in the present environment as unfriendly forces watched those sources, and it would doubtless bring more attention that its benefit deserved, at least at first. It would be better for the young man to seek those out on his own some time later, once he had achieved a degree of proficiency at the arts he had already been taught, as by then he ought to have at least a modicum of ability to defend himself.

Similarly, a book on sex magic, while useful and appropriate, when Xander would realistically have only one potential partner, thus almost certainly involving young Willow, would have trod too close to the line of non-interference as her parents had been quite firm on not endangering her sexual innocence any more than her mental ignorance.

They had even employed charms to that effect, virtually ensuring that no romantic attachment would ever work for the girl until those were removed. At present they were so strong that dating was next to impossible for her, but time on the Hellmouth had already begun to fray them. Eventually, as those tattered, she would be able to form temporary, short term relationships. But even so the magic of those chastity charms would prevent something permanent from forming, probably until the day the sweet girl died.

However, those spells were far from subtle, the skills he was about to impart would be more than sufficient to detect them and from there would require no effort on the part of any competent mage to remove. Xander already knew enough theory to construct a spell to remove those charms himself.

The last in this long series was the fairly plebeian 'U.S. Army Survival Manual', which was basically the Boy Scout's Handbook on steroids, including everything one might need from hunting walrus to setting effective traps using only naturally occurring materials.

Then it was time to put away the books and the computer, and get to the less tedious, but more dangerous, acts.

"Xander, I want you to focus on your brow chakra, your Third Eye. When you feel it, open it. You know that you can," ordered the mage.

"Its open," said Xander, after a moment.

"Good," replied the mage, "Now close it, and open it again."

"Done," said Xander, a few seconds later.

"Look around ," said the mage, "What do you see?"

"Everything is glowing, almost... alive, but there are trails of black smoke, everywhere," Xander said. "Your aura is hidden, though, by... an aura cloaking spell?"

"That's correct," the mage replied, pleased that his student was already using the knowledge he had been given. "The 'black smoke' is the energy of the Hellmouth, which shrouds the entire town, and can be seen or felt as far away as Los Angeles. The wards I've placed should reduce its influence, somewhat, but they'll wear out in about a week. You will need to replace them."

"Its... sickening," said Xander.

"Yes, it is," the mage agreed, "but the Third Eye can also look inward. Do that, now."

"I see... light. A pulsing light, in sort of a cage," said Xander.

"That is your power," explained the mage, "confined by your fear of yourself. You have the key. Open the cage."

"Its open," said Xander. "I feel... different. Stronger, somehow."

"You've taken your first steps into a larger world," said the mage. "When you awaken, you will not remember me, but you will remember all the rest of it. Now, sleep."

Xander returned to sleep, and the mage left, locking the front door behind him. He walked to his car, and drove toward LA. He had a plane to catch.

* * *

"So Mr. Mage Dude taught you a whole bunch of stuff then bailed, just like that?" Jesse appeared flummoxed, playing with the straw in his soda, as Xander finished retelling the events of the previous night. "That's just crazy, man. Why would he do that? I mean, what's the point?" 

Xander had no good reply, so just shrugged. A demonstration of a few simple spells had already erased all doubt of the existence of magic or that the event had really happened.

Willow's face had been going through a myriad of emotions as Xander explained his experience, alert for both the changes in her lifelong friend (of which there were many) but also the reassuring similarities (which were not a few). In the end she smiled, shyly, as she concluded that he was still very much her Xander-shaped friend.

Although, if this had been done a few years later, a proper sense of Hellmouth induced paranoia could have thrown doubt on that conclusion. For the moment, however, she was convinced that her crush was, in all important ways, the same young man he had always been. And just about every change noted so far had been a distinct improvement.

Concluding she was happy with the change, she began an excited stream of Willow-babble that threatened to turn into a squeal of delight when it became clear Xander was actually following all of her honor student terminology.

* * *

"Okay. Here we are. The moment you've all been waiting for! The one, the only, the amazing... Vamp-Vision!" Jesse exclaimed proudly, and with a stage performer's sense of flair waved to his toy telescope and set of binoculars that they had scrounged together for the evening.

The trio sat upon chairs they had dragged up the old wooden steps into the bell tower of a church that had a fair view of one of the town's many cemeteries.

"So now we get to see if this all is real," Willow popped a few kernels of popcorn into her mouth, having brought movie treats for the occasion.

Xander nodded. He had just as much confusion about this topic as his friends, and wanted it resolved. It was one thing for him to cause a seed to sprout on demand, freshen a slightly fading blossom, or create a small witchlight that was scarcely lighter than a match (the only spells he had gotten to function just yet, and all tremendously minor ones, triggering effects that all wanted to happen anyway, just requiring a slight supply of energy, more proofs of magical concepts than actual spells). It was quite another to believe in actual bedtime story bogeymen terrorizing the night.

Thus, they had all agreed upon this nighttime session of vamp-watching. If what he had learned in those books from that mage was true then a few of the bodies buried three days ago were about to be unearthed - and the graverobbers would be digging out from inside.

Standing as they were in an active church, and thus holy ground, they ought to be perfectly safe. The telescope and binoculars ought to be enough to get a good view of the newly fanged tanless ones as they appeared. Too bad they didn't have enough sets for all three to use simultaneously, but there was more than one grave due to be opened if those books he'd memorized were correct. They could take turns watching.

Then they'd have their proof, one way or another, and once more they'd get it from perfect safety.

"Ooh, I see something stirring in Grave Number One!" Jesse crowed, peering through the telescope. Then all joy and excitement left him as he watched further.

Willow had snatched up the binoculars and, fiddling with them quickly, dialed in on what Jesse was seeing. Then she, too, grew very quiet, paling dramatically as she watched the scene unfold.

They watched, one by one, as those graves opened, as more vampires came swaggering out of mausoleums or sewer pipes, and they watched as those vamps ate a late night jogger.

Willow screamed. Jesse threw up, and Xander felt a cold chill of fear settle into his bones, as well as an iron core of resolve form in the pit of his stomach. None of them felt the least bit safe leaving the church that night.

Willow's snacks went uneaten.

End Chapter One


	2. Chapter 2

The Knights of Scooby   
Chapter Two 

by Lionheart 

---- 

When dawn arose, ending their night of terrified vigil, the trio of teens broke up so each could go to their separate homes. None spoke as they were too busy dealing with their shock over the horrifying reality of the dangers that they'd seen, and the very helpless feeling they'd suffered as they'd watched those... creatures, assault, then drain and kill that innocent jogger. 

They'd wanted to do something to help, to stop that horrible, awful murder, but what? 

They were still kids, and those were vampires! They had neither guns nor bows to do anything about it from a safe distance, and going out there to try and do anything to save the man in person would have been like three small pieces of candy bravely assaulting a hungry group of five year old boys! 

They'd felt helpless to save that man, and indeed they were, but that very helpless feeling underscored their fear and all night long those three friends had been very afraid indeed. 

It was a life-altering experience for all of them. 

For Xander in particular, who could see their black and sickening auras, it was an even worse experience than for his friends. 

He also got annoyed at himself for his weakness. He'd sworn to Mr. Mage Dude who'd taught him (okay, a couple of minutes one evening while he'd made him memorize some books, but still) that he would protect his friends. 

The trouble with that was, Xander spent that whole night wondering how on Earth he was going to do it! 

Vampires were faster and stronger than humans were, by a lot! Okay, so they were toasty, but he hadn't had any convenient cans of lighter fluid to spray around to save that guy. 

Maybe he should? 

Ok, pyro tendencies aside, there had to be something he could do. And, as they spent the night in horror waiting for the dawn to come, Xander had had an idea. 

Ok, it wasn't much of one, and he had no idea if it was truly going to work or not. But both of those books on demons had said that one good way to slay a vampire was to stick a wooden stake through its heart. 

Well, after seeing those vampires effortlessly toy with a grown man, a fit jogger who looked like he also lifted weights, neither Xander nor his friends would be terribly eager to walk up to one of the living dead and try their luck perforating its chest cavity with a broken off ruler. 

But something about one of the lines in Van Hellsing's guide struck him, and he'd been worrying that thought over in his head all night. 

Vampires grew stronger with age. The guide even said that fledglings were the easiest for a human being to destroy, as they were the weakest in their powers and had the most exploitable weaknesses - being able to find them was one, as you generally had a good idea where they'd been buried. But still, even the fledglings were far more than he felt he could handle. 

So, Xander had stewed over this thought all night: was it possible to stake them even earlier? Like, say, before they even 'woke up' as vampires? That would be the easiest and safest of all, right? They wouldn't even be able to fight back at that point. Just shove the wood in and go. 

He knew it was his fear talking, and right now it was one of the loudest things he'd ever heard. But it seemed a simple yet sound theory. Even if the stake through the heart method wouldn't work until the vamp actually became a vamp, having the bit of wood already through there ought to stake it the moment staking became an option, right? 

The boy was, quite frankly, terrified of trying to face those demons in any kind of stand up fight. They had toyed with that jogger and only seemed to enjoy themselves more as he'd struggled. So anything that meant getting to avoid having to go through that dance himself was probably a good thing. 

It was, quite frankly, the most sickening event he'd ever had to watch, and with parents like his he'd thought that record would be pretty hard to beat. 

So, in the protecting rays of the soothing morning light, Xander had made his way to the local mortuary with a box of sharpened pencils. From what he knew about the theory of magic, coupled with those demonology texts, any kind of wood through the heart made some kind of short or grounding on the type of magic animating vamps as vamps. So even a pencil ought to do it, as it ought to be a magic thing, not a gross tissue damage sort of deal. 

Which was a good thing, as a box of pencils was cheap, and they were easy to sharpen. 

The hours around dawn were a golden opportunity, as it ought to be safe from the creatures that hunted the night, as well as being too early for the sort of routines led by normal people, so no one ought to run into him. That was good, as it made a little breaking and entering possible for very little risk. 

Xander found that he couldn't do nothing, that it just wasn't in him to sit idly by and let those fang faced horrors assault and kill people in his town. But at the same time he was waaay too scared to even think about going up against them directly. 

So, as they had waited for dawn to come, he'd resolved to see if he couldn't try this to reduce their population indirectly. 

Breaking into the mortuary was not the hardest experience in Xander's life. Working his nerve up to do it had been far harder. As he got there he discovered the service door in the back had a broken lock, probably left that way for years, and the claw marks around the handle had also been an eye-opener. Still, the place had been quiet as he'd made his way inside. 

The funerary services of Sunnydale were frighteningly efficient. They'd tag, bag and bury bodies as part of a smooth operation that would give anyone the wiggins if they knew how much volume that service handled. 

The teen had no way to know which bodies were those lost to 'animal attacks' or 'Gangs on PCP' and he wasn't about to stick around trying to find out, reading charts when who knows what demons could be about. So he just opened cabinets of refrigerated bodies and, after popping back outside to find a good, solid rock to use as a hammer, pounded away, shoving his pencils all of the way in the hearts of body after body so they left no outward part. Then he spent half an hour gaining sufficient mastery of a very minor illusion, one of those 'proof of concept' magic tricks, so that he could cover the holes and make it seem like nothing had happened. 

A bit of makeup would have done as well. Luckily, no one looked too closely at bodies in Sunnydale, although he did note that the doors into the staff areas like the employee lounge were all decorated with huge, elaborate Maltese crosses, and had silver plated door handles also worked in religious designs. 

That was a good idea, and he wondered if the hardware store sold any. 

Discarding his rock back to where he'd found it on his way out, Xander reflected in shocked amazement that he'd brought with him a box of two hundred pencils and it was severely depleted. 

Still not feeling very Xander-like, almost certainly in shock from the whole night (not to mention what he'd just done) the poor teen dragged himself home so that he could sleep. 

Back at his house he skirted around the edges, sneaking up to his room, as his parents were in one of their shouting matches, once again over finances as each drunk blamed the other for spending too much. Xander paid very little attention to the content of the shouting, only to be glad it distracted both of them and let him sneak in unnoticed. 

However, as Xander was showering just before he got to bed, his parents had settled down to angry glaring when an insurance salesman called at their door and both of them had the same thought all at once, almost like magic. 

---- 

Much later that day, three kids on bicycles came to a stop before a store front, looking up at a sign that said, 'Tai Chi'. 

"So, tell me again; Why are we spending our comic book money on this?" Jesse quipped, looking dubiously through the glass at the gi-clad students within. 

Xander shrugged. "You can't learn martial arts properly from a book. I ought to know, as I have a half dozen of some of the best books memorized and I can't make heads or tails out of how to start. It's like hearing a tune on the radio then trying to play it on a piano. I know how it's supposed to go, but getting there is a whole nuther deal. So, while I probably could sort it out eventually, we are going to take a shortcut by going around town to find out which class has the best instructors so they can get us started. We'd need lots of drills in any case. This way we at least have an expert correcting our mistakes. The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread." 

"And, why do we need to know how to fight, again?" Jesse rubbed the back of his neck while the others attached locking chains to their bikes. "I was getting kind of attached to letting the jocks beat us up." 

"Think of it as taking away their birthday presents," Xander quipped. 

"Okay, I'm fine with that," his lifelong buddy shrugged, then shrugged again. "Besides High School jocks probably hit harder, and now we're old enough to appear on the radar of the vampires. So, I guess this is cool." 

Willow appeared beside them, fresh from locking up their bikes (all three together), looking nervous and not at all sure of herself as she stared up at the shop sign. 

"How is this going to work?" she asked. 

Xander gave a very casual shrug. "I dunno. I like what I've read about Jeet Kune Do, but they haven't got a school for that here." Then he put his hands together in a martial arts 'wise man' pose and intoned in a voice too silly to be serious, "but, as Master Bruce Lee taught, 'The Truth in Combat is different for each person in this style. You must research and absorb what is useful, and discard what is useless'." 

His 'wise sensei' nodding pose was disrupted by Jesse taking a pretend swing at him. Laughing, the trio went inside, although it was a strained laughter. 

In the end they would cut their allowances to the bone, scrounge, bite into savings and eventually ask loans from Willow to each sign up for three full length summer courses on self defense, each meeting five times a week. The courses they would take would be those with competent-seeming instructors (part of this was easy to judge by them having crosses around their necks and on the doors to their dojos), and so they started to learn Tai Chi, Shaolin Kung Fu, and Tae Kwon Do. 

It would be an intensive summer program for them, studying all three at once. But then again it was the only thing they'd thought of yet that would make the butterfly filled knots of terror in their stomachs go away even a little bit. 

They had seen the night, and it was dangerous. Learning how to defend themselves, as useless at that might be against the vastly superior vamps, was also the first thing they found that could calm them down even a little. 

They also started to take longer bike rides, going out for exercise more than transportation as they went on more difficult routes through the local hills, filling out what Xander liked to call 'their running away muscles.' 

Willow got them all permission to visit a pool for swimming, where they all spent as much time horsing around as anything. It was good therapy, and a way to hang out and remain friends in spite of having so much reduced their mutual play times. 

---- 

Back at the Harris residence, there were maids aplenty in evidence as a professional cleaning crew came through and thoroughly cleaned out the place from top to bottom. 

They vacuumed, steam cleaned and dusted all of the corners, throwing out the accumulated garbage of ages, grubbing out all of the mess as well as spraying for insects and molds, along with putting in new carpets to replace the ones subject to countless years of abuse, and painting over all of the interior walls. 

It could hardly be accounted the same house, and they were hardly done with it yet. New curtains had been ordered, as well as new furniture and finishings that there was no way the Harris family could truly afford. The TV moved in after the cleaning crew left was so big they'd have had to move out if it wasn't a flat screen. The kitchen and bath wares got totally replaced with the newest top of the line models. Anything broken got repaired or replaced, while several that functioned just fine got upgraded, like the water heater getting taken out and replaced by a device that provided infinite hot water on demand, so one could quite literally shower all day long if one was of a mind to. Or one could just hang out in the newly installed fully enclosed hot tub. 

They got new towels and silk sheets, with new beds to go underneath them, lighting fixtures got changed out for more expensive ones, and, indeed, the entire home went through a badly needed overhaul into something distinctly close to high class. 

No one knew how, or why, but somehow Xander's mom had even managed to call on someone who remembered her from better times and could pull some strings to get this all done in a single week. 

It had to have cost a bundle, but it happened. 

The bill was enormous, but the couple smiled as Anthony Harris signed for the debt. 

---- 

It was a week after they had first seen and acknowledged the existence of vampires, and Xander was back in the church where they'd seen a man killed, helpless to do anything to help him. 

Xander still hadn't been able to get the frustrations he'd felt out of his craw, so earlier that evening he had stolen a can of gasoline his dad kept in the garage for fueling the mower and spread it around the site of the major vamp gathering they'd seen that first night. 

This time, as he was once again hanging out at the church with a set of binoculars, he was lying on the floor of the belltower just barely peeking over the edge, as he didn't want any of the vampires to see him. The reason for this was he had in his hand a radio remote scavenged from an old toy, and connected to a pair of wires down in the cemetery that he'd set to spark off the gasoline whenever he pulled the trigger. 

While he'd not yet mastered the spells from any of that techno-pagan stuff, some of the descriptions of technology they had proved to be very useful, as in setting up this very basic trap. 

So, he waited as he once again saw the vamps gather and fledglings rise from their own fresh graves. The difference was, this time as soon as he had most of them gathering in the spot they had last time he lit off the gasoline, torching them all, killing off a whole group of them in a short burst of flame. 

Once it was over, the young man found, to his own surprise, that he was shaking in relief. He hadn't known what he expected, but that was certainly far easier than he'd originally feared. 

Revenge for the jogger and a release from some part of his fears all at once. It felt very good in a very strange sort of way. 

Now he only wished he'd shared this moment with Willow and Jesse. 

Jogging down the stairs to where he'd left a sleeping bag laid out on a pew, the young man resolved to tell them about it - after he'd run his now regular errand of staking all of the bodies at the morgue early the next morning. 

---- 

"So you just burned them up, just like that?" Jesse ignored his softdrink he was so impressed. Then he grinned widely and resumed stirring with his straw. "Dude, I so totally wish I could've seen that! So, when are you going to invite us to the exciting rerun of the 'Burn That Vampire' show?" 

Xander was actually feeling uncomfortable as he shrugged. "Sorry. Van Hellsing's guide is pretty firm that you should never set the same trap twice, 'lest the hunter become the hunted' and all that. I guess what he meant to say was that these vamps were all human once, and that the older ones can think just like the rest of us, so if we become too predictable they can start setting traps for us, rather than the other way around." 

"What could they do to us on holy ground?" Jesse gloated, still stirring his drink. 

"I dunno. Throw rocks, shoot us with guns, I guess. The old guides talk about them using swords and bows, so I can't see why they couldn't go buy a rifle or something." Xander was still struggling with this burden, even after a week. He sighed, "but anyway, Sun Tzu agreed with Van Hellsing. He said: Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances." 

"Oh," Jesse wilted, depressed at missing out on his favorite show. 

"But how would they even know we are there?" Willow bubbled. 

"Vampires have excellent hearing, or so the guides say. They'd probably be able to detect us by our breathing. But anyway, they'd smell the gasoline if we tried that a second time, and there's no way they'd step on it. The first time they knew but didn't care, as they didn't see any danger." The boy of her dreams sighed, still struggling to restore his essential Xander-cheer. But she could so easily see why he felt this whole mess fell on his shoulders. I mean, who else could they rely on? 

"Dude, I so totally want to flame a group of vamps," Jesse interrupted. "Can't you think of anything?" 

Willow watched her crush try to sort through his knowledge trying to answer that question, the young redhead fretting visibly over his changes. It was sobering him, and a sober Xander was very un-Xander-like, a crime against nature. "I wish there was something we could do to help," she pouted. 

This restored a very Xander-like grin to his face, as he joked, "Well, if you were very good I could just recite those old guides to you as bedtime stories. Too bad I don't have a physical copy, but the text is all here." He tapped his forehead. "Do you think I should photocopy my head?" 

"So, you don't have a spell for reading minds?" Jesse asked, nodding when Xander shook his head. 

"But you could type it all out," Willow offered. 

Both boys looked at her in varying stages of shocked disbelief. 

"I'm serious," the redhead wriggled into a better state to preach her idea. "I could give you lessons, and I've got a word-processor. I'll bet you wouldn't be long before you were up to sixty or eighty words a minute, and it would do us all good to have Word files of those books. That way they'd be searchable and I could cross reference them, not to mention we could all read them." 

"Yah, but that would take all summer," Xander protested, leaning back as if to distance himself from the amount of work she'd just implied him doing. 

"But the time will pass anyway, whether you type out those books or not," Willow countered. "Think of how much better prepared we'd be if we could know all the stuff you do about how to fight ugly, nasty, icky things!" 

"Uh, I thought most of our plan was to run away?" Jesse prompted. 

Xander once again dropped into what his friends had taken to calling his 'wise guy' pose as he mocked old teachers with great pretended seriousness. "Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected as we prepare to run like chimps with our pants on fire." 

Willow giggled while Jesse guffawed out loud. 

Still in his pretended teacher mode, Xander raised a finger in mock wisdom. "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near." 

"Well, we've got the 'seem unable' part down pat," Jesse heckled. "And you could probably give degrees on the Xander School of Seeming Inactive." 

Continuing in his 'wise guy' act as if he hadn't been interrupted, Xander waggled his eyebrows, pontificating while his friends sniggered. "Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected." 

"Not expected?" Willow bounced up, full of eagerness as her eyes shone as she interrupted Xander's planned for joke, derailing it in the process. "Does this mean you'll come with me to the Sunnydale Public Library?" 

Still amused at his overacting, and the flummoxed expression on his face as Willow practically tackled him in her eagerness for more books, Jesse waved his nearly out of order friend down. "Yah, yah, I get it: Where you are weak, appear strong. Where you are strong, appear weak, and so on. But that's bogus! We're totally weak! We can't possibly fight them! And how are we supposed be seem strong anyway? Well, maybe if we had, like, a vampire-proof suit or something, but... I dunno, do you think we could, like, paint an 'S' on your chest and get you to wear blue tights and a cape, or something? Do you know how to fly yet?" 

"No!" Xander laughed along with them. 

"Would be nice if we could, though," Willow murmured, eying Xander as she blushed prettily, thinking more about tights than anything vampire-proof. 

'Bad Willow!' she scolded herself inside. 

Meanwhile, Xander's thoughts were going the opposite way, more toward a bite-me-not set of attire. Could they actually come up with such a thing? 

He wondered. 

Now Xander had never truly used all of the brains he had been given at his birth. However, he was continually forced to reexamine that habit over the past week since Mr Mage Dude had stopped by his bedroom, and only part of that was the mage giving him a hypnotic command to do so. He had bunches of reasons, and actually Sun Tzu summed up most of them pretty well: The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose. 

Or, to use a modern colloquial, "he who fails to prepare, prepares to fail." 

And, to put it bluntly, failure in this case meant either death, or worse, for himself or for his friends. 

But dang it! Now this was all sounding like schoolwork! 

Then again, without a bit of math he never could've been sure of getting that radio remote gas trap to go off, and without that he never could've dusted so many vamps on his first try. 

On reflection, he decided he could live with a bit of schoolwork if that kept he and his friends alive. That certainly gave more meaning to the experience than dull routines, boring homework, and the uninterested glares his parents and teachers gave regardless of whether he did well or poorly. 

Blowing up a few vamps here or there could almost be considered reward enough for the whole school experience on its own. What was otherwise dull being used to explosively remove certain fang-faced cretins from the area in balls of flaming death... well, he could no longer say that his school material was boring, or that it had no practical value to his life, or even that it was uninteresting anymore, as he was very interested in exploding vamps. 

And all of that techno-pagan stuff was about technology, and technology was all about science, and that was, admittedly, one of those subjects they'd more or less been failing to cram into his head at school. 

Another line came to him, this time from the Book of Five Rings: It is difficult to realize the true Way just through sword-fencing. Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things. 

Maybe there was more to this that he could be investigating? 

Yet another quote assailed him: From one thing, know ten thousand things. When you attain the Way of Strategy there will not be one thing you cannot see. You must study hard. 

Van Hellsing also supported constant study and research as the only true advantage a hunter had over the powerful but complacent demons of the night. 

Xander sighed inwardly, resigning himself. All of the experts seemed to agree that it was time for him to start channeling Willow as far as studies go. And, with the lives of his friends at stake, poised to enter the bait pool of a town full to overflowing with icky, superhuman uglies, he couldn't say that it was something he was unwilling to do. 

Even he knew that lessons in applied chemistry eventually yielded things like TNT and plastic explosive and all sorts of nifty toys that one could use to play with the undead. They'd never teach the actual formulas to High School students, but he'd need that solid grounding in the basics they did give if he ever wanted to make use of any of those recipes, should he find them. 

Similarly physics and all that. Who cared about bending light? Well, now that he could very well be fighting vampires every so often, if he could find a way to bend some sunlight into a lair here or there... it had possibilities. 

Some of that technomancy stuff sounded so sweet. Yet the key to that was science and the key to science was math. 

"Xander?" Willow ventured, causing him to realize that he'd been spacing out for a while there. 

He shook himself. "Sorry Wills, got distracted there. I think we could actually make a vampire-proof suit if we wanted to. If we just put crosses all over the surface of it they shouldn't be able to touch it. No touching means no biting, so it should be safe to wear outside at night." 

End of Chapter Two 


	3. Chapter 3

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Three 

by Lionheart

----

It was an unusually thoughty Xander that meditated in his room, trying hard to ignore the overnight changes to his home or the fact that his junk was all packed in plastic buckets in the garage, waiting for him to retrieve them so he could spread it around his room once again.

No, he did his best to ignore all of this, as thoughts swirled all around in his mind and he subconsciously sought for order among all of the new ideas that had been so recently and forcefully shoved inside his brain.

So far he hadn't given himself an opportunity to try processing it all, and this was his first real attempt to sort it all out.

"To govern the world you must govern yourself."

Well, Xander wasn't particularly interested in governing anyone, but he had to admit the appeal of staying alive, and now that he had an appreciation of the dangers of Sunnydale, he had a great deal of appreciation for the art of winning battles, and both Sun Tzu and Musashi were emphatic that principles of fighting were the same regardless of if you had small scale engagements or huge conflicts with large armies.

"If he attains the virtue of strategy, one man can beat ten men."

Well, since an average vamp was four or five times stronger than an average man, that seemed to be an excellent starting point as far as qualities to have for anyone wanting to keep his blood inside his neck where it belonged.

So it looked like he was going to be walking the path of the warrior, whether he wanted to rule anyone or not. At least both Bruce Lee and Musashi agreed that "Men must polish their particular Way."

It was odd to the young man how so many old fogies and movie stars agreed on so much, in spite of never having met (that he could tell).

Xander continued to sit, meditating, pondering on the books now sealed inside his head in an attempt to sort meaning out of all of those memorized words, to make those books and what they taught part of him, rather than just a bunch of phrases that hung out in the back of his head.

A passage from the Book of Five Rings was moving him now: It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way.

Xander would normally say that he was allergic to words like assiduously, and they caused him to break out in hives. But the alternative seemed clearly to be coming down with a bad case of fangs, so he could learn to live with having hives, and did not interrupt as those words went on, almost like Musashi was speaking to him directly:

"This is the way for men who want to learn my strategy:

1 Do not think dishonestly.  
2 The Way is in training.  
3 Become acquainted with every art.  
4 Know the Ways of all professions.  
5 Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.  
6 Develop intuitive judgment and understanding for everything.  
7 Perceive those things which cannot be seen.  
8 Pay attention even to trifles.  
9 Do nothing which is of no use."

Random quotes spun around inside him, very much as if speaking to him. "It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first."

Xander knew he was changing, changing drastically even. He couldn't tell right now if he wanted to be changed, or if he'd even like the sort of person he seemed almost doomed by this knowledge to become. But, on the other hand, he knew the sort of person he was, and he couldn't say much for his former self's ability to carry on a campaign of destruction against the things that hunted the night.

Holding them off wasn't enough. Staying safe wasn't enough. Xander knew his ultimate goal, he'd known it from the moment they'd seen those... things eat that jogger.

The goal was victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror, for without victory there was no survival. It was the human race against an evil so great words could not encompass it, creatures so repulsive and horrible there could be no coexistence, monsters whose insatiable lust for murder and bloodshed was never surpassed in all the dark and lamentable catalog of human crimes.

The world would not be safe so long as one vampire remained in it.

If even one remained it could restart the entire bloody mess of them just as a match struck to gasoline could ignite a blazing inferno. You could not put out only a part of any fire and expect that to be the end of it. It was either all or nothing, a choice between safety or being consumed in the flames.

You don't save a boat from sinking by patching only a part of the hole. You either stop the leak or lose the ship, there are no halfway measures.

It was to be a war of extermination, and he would fight it on all fronts, on the land, the sea and even up in space if he had to, regardless of whether he was the only one fighting or not.

There were some things just too evil to be allowed to exist, and vampires were, so far, the only entry on that list as far as he was concerned.

Well, and Vice-Principal Snyder in a bikini, but hopefully that great evil could be averted, so that it never came to pass.

He shuddered, having seen the vile man on a trip to his new school alongside of Willow, who had wanted to pick up her book list early. Sadly, for his former self image, he had picked up his at the same time, and already had the books he would need for next year.

He was even... shudder... planning on studying them, before school actually started no less!

He could feel vital slacker points draining away from out of his grasp as he made that admission inside of himself. He checked himself over for traces of red hair or a tendency to babble before he left the house to visit his friends.

It was about time he told Willow that he was ready for those typing lessons. If he was going to be spending all of his much reduced free time thinking over their words for a while, he might as well be typing them that his friends could read them too.

That way they could at least talk the subjects over.

More words followed him out of the door, as if dogging his footsteps: You must appreciate this. The essence of this book is that you must train day and night in order to make quick decisions. In strategy it is necessary to treat training as part of normal life with your spirit unchanging.

Ok, but if the funky old guys who wrote those books got him to wear silk pajamas out in public, it was going to be time to shoot himself.

----

Tony Harris and his wife had a plan.

They each thought it was their own plan, and each one imagined the other was wholly ignorant of the sudden fit of genius that had seized ahold of the one who had The Plan.

The plan had come to them just after a shrieking match between the drunken pair about their abysmal finances.

It was simple, really. The couple had no love for each other; No, none at all worth speaking of. However, as they were reminded by a traveling salesman who had stopped by their door, there was such a thing called insurance.

Life insurance, particularly.

Some naive company had decided to make inroads into the California market by peddling life insurance door to door in Sunnydale, of all places. There were even gang violence and animal violence clauses available, for those that wanted them. No doubt the company planned on signing on a few thousand contracts at steeply inflated prices, then leaning hard on the local PD to cut down on crime rates and wild animal populations so they could rake in profits.

It'd never happen, of course.

But, for a time this golden opportunity was offered, and each of the elder Harrises were determined to grab it while it lasted. Toward this end, they'd both had day spa trips including full makeovers, cut back on their drinking, and done everything in their powers to cover up the evidence of their utterly wasted lives so they could pass off on the insurance company's inspections.

Mr. Harris had even spoken to one of his old buddies, who'd employed him off and on for years, firing him whenever his drinking got too bad, to alter his books to show continuous employment over that time, invoking a technicality to get all of the 'off' periods described as sabbaticals, but not emphasized in any of the papers, so there was a good chance of some bored clerk reading those thinking that he'd been steadily employed for a decent amount of time.

The pair were, between them, doing a fair job of impersonating a respectable couple. There was no way that it could last. They'd never keep it up even a second week, but it only had to last until all of the papers got signed.

Then each one planned to dupe the other into going to one of the rough areas of town, kicking them out of the car and hoping the gangs on PCP got them. Afterwards, each hoped to live out their lives on those juicy checks.

They'd even had a brilliant idea, and somehow gotten a lawyer to create a full trust, complete with tax shelters, to keep all of the money themselves and not have any lost to inheritance laws, while the debts died with the debtors, each one thinking they'd be the one to enjoy all that newly sheltered wealth.

Of course their son, Alexander LaVelle Harris, got included in all of that paperwork just to make everything seem legit.

In their rush to obtain the insurance, neither drunk paused to think about why their spouse was being so unusually helpful in all of this preparation.

----

"Wax on, wax off, Daniel-san!" Xander joked to his two best friends in the whole wide world as they adopted a training technique from the Karate Kid movie to practice blocks while polishing cars.

There really were blocking techniques that you could practice like that, and it earned them a supply of 'fun money' by doing it for Xander's Uncle Rory.

Despite their classes, they still had a great deal more time than money, so it seemed an equitable deal to the teens. And it even served as double-duty, as they got in extra practice time for their martial arts, in addition to getting some pocket change.

"Okay, enough with the Master Miyagi stuff," Jesse laughed as they came to the end of their stint. "I note, by the blessed clock spirit, that we have come to the end of our car-polishing today. Tis time, I think, to play Robin Hood and picture the divine image of Cordelia in tights!"

"Please, picture the Wicked Witch of the West in tights? I am trying not to lose my breakfast," Xander returned in good humor, as they went over to their short range improvised archery practice area, also set up on his uncle's lot, in an area sheltered by a good, tall fence.

Xander had, previous to this, already taken some wood and, using the instructions from the US Army Survival Manual, shaved it down into three acceptable but not elegant bows, and with those, and some arrows, they practiced their archery.

The bows were weak, too weak to hunt small game with and certainly no good for hurting vamps. However, Jesse liked to laugh that the three neophyte archers who used them were even weaker.

But that would change as they got stronger.

"Maid Marion?" Xander passed Willow her bow, which she accepted with a fierce blush he hadn't noticed before.

Truthfully, she was picturing HIM in tights! And the image wasn't doing any good for her composure.

"Oh no!" Jesse objected when he tried to hand him the Robin Hood hat with his bow. "No giving to the poor for me! If I were to steal from the rich I'd keep it all myself. Besides, you won the toss when we started this. You get to be Robin Hood. I'll just stay a Merry Man. Less camera time and more time for smooching in the bushes with the lusty tavern wenches while you get to pine over prissy noble ladies."

"Fine," Xander rammed the feathered green cap on with a smile. "But you forget, it's the noble ladies who come with wealthy dowries."

"Dowries which I shall, unfortunately, feel obligated to steal," Jesse sniffed as he melodramatically placed a hand to his heart as if in great suffering.

Then he sobered up, standing tall. "What's up, Xand-Man? You never let me win these battles of wits with you before. Why are you so off your game? Is it..?"

Face serious, Xander drew back a nocked arrow and let loose at the straw target, hitting one of the outermost concentric circles. Then he nodded. "Yah. I know. Ever since that day Mr. Mage Dude downloaded several libraries worth of serious dudes talking about combat and death into my head. And worse since we confirmed the existence of bloodsucking dental rejects."

"Well," Jesse took on a comforting tone as he, too, pulled back a string and let his arrow fly, slightly more true than Xander's, but both of them were so bad it was probably luck. "If we have to fight to protect ourselves I do prefer to do it from the safety of a church, and just stake them at range. So this is cool."

Willow had listened to this, before ducking out to collect the lunches she'd prepared, grabbing them from Uncle Rory's fridge, coming back with the bean sprout sandwiches and fruit smoothies she'd made, and the boys eagerly put aside their bows to consume them.

By agreement, each of them had a say in how to defend themselves against things that went bite in the night - beyond merely not going out at night, if at all possible, that is, and while it was Xander's idea that got them all attending martial arts classes, it was Willow's that they all started eating decent food.

To everyone's surprise, Xander did NOT spontaneously dissolve into a puddle of slacker molecules and industrial yellow dye (from the Twinkie supply in his bloodstream) upon tasting his first bean sprout.

The old Xander wanted to cry and rave about the unfairness of it all, and he had done so to and for the amusement of his friends. But the new Xander could almost feel Mr. Samurai Dude glowering over his shoulder at the mere thought of processed snack cakes squeezed out in lots of thousands by industrial chemical apparatus and growling something about 'EAT nothing which is of no use!'

So, the first round had gone to the ghost of Musashi and now Xander ate more healthy food, at least until he could think of an argument on which to base a comeback for the crusade of the beloved eternal snack logs.

Of course, due to the fact that nearly everything in the world was a health food in comparison to the wonder that was Twinkies, Xander was still able to gorge himself on typical American favorites like hamburger and pizza, and even Willow had to laughingly agree that he was eating better.

And Xander was not the only one who was changing. Admittedly, all of them were a bit put off their normal routines by having to scramble each day to fight back the terror that was knowing that things straight out of B-grade horror films were cruising main street in the wee hours, but every day it seemed Willow got slightly odder to his perceptions. Stuttering around him for one, which her usual familiarity had often diminished.

Even looking at her aura confused Xander.

Just being able to see them didn't automatically tell him what all of the colors, pulses, veins and marbling all meant. In fact, he found it confusing as anything. There were colors in Willow's aura he couldn't see in anyone else. She had patterns that sortuv matched some of his, and all three of them were veined with what he guessed were tiny bits of each other's energies since they looked kind of similar in ways. He guessed, if that were the case, that it was due to their long friendship.

What's more, much of what he saw was in a near-constant state of flux, shifting and moving about in patterns he couldn't begin to describe, much less understand. And some things, he knew from having read the theory, you never saw until you looked for.

However, to his shock and amazement, there were spells clearly visible to his sight in effect upon his precious Willow, and they did not bear the look of anything benign, but it wasn't wholly dark either, which confused him. Most of what he saw could clearly be interpreted as a constraint or compulsion type of magic, and that thought chilled him to his bone marrow.

But most of the non-magical stuff he saw he had no clue what it meant.

Throckmorton's Annotated Codex of Magical Thought didn't have much to say about aura reading, other than some of the general uses of the skill and the theory behind how it worked, nothing so practical as instructions on how to interpret what he saw.

On the other hand, that codex did hold 64 of those minor 'proof of concept' magical spells, along with very detailed and precise instructions on how to handle them. This was important, or so it told, because those spells were instructional much more than they were practical.

While just about anyone would dearly love to throw fireballs to begin roasting vampires straight away, and some approaches to magic did exactly that, the spells in Throckmorton's Codex were all selected to teach a student about how magic functioned, and the more one used them the better his control of other spells was going to be, supposedly getting more effect for equal power and all of that.

Until, of course, you outgrew them. There was only so much understanding they could impart, after all. Then you were supposed to, if you were following Throckmorton's ideas for magical instruction that is, get the student to use his dry and pompous theories to construct the next levels of instructional spells on his own, using those as his base.

The other two spell books had not gone along with that concept (no surprise there), and presented a useful catalog of spells prepared for their utility, all ready to use right away.

Though the young man had no way of knowing it, Throckmorton was as far from being a chaos mage as it was possible to get and still remain human. Even the oldest, most hidebound members of the Watcher's Council found his book a trifle tedious, and most in the magic business used it as a reference only, if they could tolerate it at all. But the gypsy, pressed for both time and materials, had used it as his primer because it was, for anyone who could stand it, a very comprehensive work, and unsurpassed on theory, and also what he had happened to have on hand.

Xander suspected that Mr. Mage Dude had never actually read that whole Codex himself. Some of those pages in it, the ones with the tables and other useful reference information, were obviously stained and well worn, while the bulk of those tedious pages were still lily white, fresh and new. Well, as new as a very old book got, anyway.

For a second, as he ate sandwiches with his friends, the young man wondered why he was thinking about this now. But the fact of the matter was that he had been spending his days resolving the mess made in his mind by absorbing so much so suddenly, and he'd given most of his focus to the other stuff, so now the somewhat neglected magic was starting to catch up.

While he'd been practicing martial arts during his days, and figuring out what he felt about Sun Tzu and the others during down times, he'd been practically dreaming Throckmorton's Codex at nights. He'd read it, effectively, about twenty times now, and each time it started to make more sense to him.

Throckmorton was a pompous windbag, but having his theories resound through his head at night, all night, until they made sense, Xander had come to conclude that the man was also a genius. It didn't save him from being drier than an Egyptian mummy, he could have said the same thing using a third as many words, easily, but his theories did have alot of merit so far. They were solid and stood up well, better the more he thought about them.

One class of Throckmorton's theories had been on the instruction of a young user of magic, and his ideal framework was as dry and tedious as the rest of his work, so Xander had no doubt it had flown about as well as a lead balloon. He advocated concentrating hard on theory until the pupil started to sprout spells spontaneously through his sheer knowledge springing forth into practical application, but even Throckmorton admitted that was too late to apply to a full grown mage and unreasonable to expect from a young student.

Still, it was his ideal theory that one keep a pupil using the lowest levels of magic until they had mastered them thoroughly, and only then allowing them to progress to higher and more complex spells, preferably by causing the students to construct the next stages of the study spells themselves out of theory and the basic models.

It sounded like a heck of a lot of work, but Xander already had those theories heaped up in piles around the inside of his head, so that aspect was covered, and he could already sense the improvement from having used that cosmetic illusion over three hundred times by now. It was something he could do with next to no effort now, as familiar as scratching his nose, matching a near limitless number of skin tones, both natural and those altered in death.

So, rather than just jump in to the cool stuff presented in those other two spellbooks, Xander had decided as he woke up that morning to give the methods detailed in the Codex a try, at least for a little while, a trial period while he decided whether he really needed the more advanced magic yet.

Thus, the reason they were having bean sprouts on their sandwiches today. Xander had gotten Willow to grab a bag of mung beans, which were the beans that bean sprouts sprouted from, and sprouted enough for their lunch himself. It had been an educational experience, and he resolved to try more of it on different kinds of seeds.

It really did become easier the more he used it, and that minor illusion he'd been using to hide the insertion marks of the pencils he'd been pounding into Sunnydale's corpse supply daily, well... he'd long since learned everything that minor illusion had to teach, and it was time to design another one. The instructions in the codex were pretty clear, so he didn't think it would be difficult to make it. The next sample version up ought to be pretty simple still, and he already knew all of the needed theories.

Picking up a peach pit from a fruit that he'd just eaten, Xander focused his magic for the sprout spell and watched as the hard nugget cracked open to shoot forth a green stem with a leaf on the end, and some tiny, threadlike roots out the other.

"You should put that in the ground," Willow told him, just as Xander was about to cast the seed aside.

Shrugging, he selected a spot and did so. Then, lunch completed, they went back to practicing their archery.

----

Xander had been planning to use the wilt cantrip on all of the dandelions in his parents' yard, but when he got home he found there weren't any. His parents had called in a yard service that was grooming and landscaping everything in sight.

Strolling up casually, he was about to break off a twig from a yet-to-be planted tree when one of the laborers stopped him, saying, "That's a three hundred dollar tree, kid. You break it, you buy it."

Admitting softly to himself that he didn't have that kind of money, the teen was inside before he realized that this was his house, so thereby by default that was already his tree anyway.

That was when it struck him. Just as he was about to bemoan the lack of funds making his plans for the evening moot, he realized what that guy said.

Going over to look out his window, Xander confirmed what he'd thought he remembered. That tree that the yardworker guy had said cost three hundred dollars was scarcely taller than Xander himself was. It couldn't be that old, nor was it all that impressive as far as girth.

It was just a tree, and mostly a stick at that. You could probably carve a broom out of it, but that was it. It was hard to believe that puny thing was worth that much money, and he suddenly had to wonder how long it would take for that little peach sprout he'd stuck in Rory's yard to grow that tall. It couldn't be long, just a couple of years, right?

So how long would it be before he could grow one that tall magically?

He'd be practicing spells all that evening.

----

If there was one thing drunken reprobates, welfare moms and general useless layabouts generally had in common, it was a skill at spinning yarns, sob stories, and other tall tales in their never-ending search for cash handouts or escape from blame. This skill at lying had served Xander's parents well before, those times Child Protective Services had come calling.

So it was that Mr. Anthony Harris and his wife returned from their medical exams all flush and happy, papers all signed and filed, with a check written to that lovely little insurance company already in the eager agent's hands.

They would wait for him to cash it (they had saved up just enough to cover it, and a guy who owed Tony a favor who worked at the bank would rush that through while the rest of their newly accumulated bills got delayed), and then it was party time!

Mr. Harris was so happy he'd even go in to work the next morning, partly to keep up the useful fiction of being employed for so long, and partly because the old buddy who had once again rehired him had his own insurance policy covering workers and their families, but mostly because he wanted the paycheck to keep him in booze until all of that insurance paperwork had gone through and he could become an extremely wealthy man.

End of Chapter Three


	4. Chapter 4

The Knights of Scooby   
Chapter Four 

by Lionheart   
based on scene by Prince Charon 

---- 

"I don't know, Wills. This seems like a big step. I don't know that I'm quite ready for this." 

"Oh, please, Xander?" the redheaded pleaded. "Just this once? I promise it won't hurt... well, too badly. I had to go through this myself once, you know." 

"Yah, but it's different for girls. You get all of these desires and urges, so it's natural for you to go leaping into this." The young man balked at what was presented before him. 

"Not really, no." Willow shook her head. "There are some girls who go their whole lives without opening them. You'd be surprised. I'm sure Cordelia is one of them." 

Staring at the doors of the library before him, Xander gulped, and screwing up his courage, took a step into the sensor beam for the automatic doors, whereupon they swished open, and he stepped inside. 

"There, that wasn't so bad, now. Was it?" she cheered. 

He was feeling parts of his body experimentally. "I don't seem to be missing and major organs, no. I'd have to give this a tentative success." 

"Well, you haven't gotten to the better parts yet," she enthused, leading him to the stacks of books. 

Xander and been alternatively freshening and wilting flowers all morning. He had discovered that there were many lucky pairings like that among his 'proof of magical concept' spells. For example, he could chill and warm, clean and dirty, tie and untie, spill and gather, dampen and dry, sweeten and sour, as well as polish and tarnish, all with those handy tutorial cantrips. And the more of them he used, the more cantrips he learned how to use, gaining a greater degree of familiarity with his own magical core. 

Of course there was only so much you could learn going back and forth using the same object as your subject, so he had begun branching out, spreading his attentions wider as he sought for usable practice. 

The more he did of them, the easier they got, just as the book had said. 

He had already built his second practice illusion, and was already finding the slightly more difficult spell a useful instructional tool, even as he used the more complex and slightly more flexible spell for the same old boring thing as his first version. 

He had also begun to use a very minor aura cloaking spell, that lasted only a few minutes, and could not hide any unreasonably significant portions of what made him who he was, so if a demon or someone wanted to find an abused and neglected child of drunken parents - there he was! 

On the other hand, those changes introduced to him by Mr. Mage Dude were all recent enough acquisitions that they had not colored his aura to a degree he could not conceal, yet. So he practiced by concealing them, and having to recast the cloaking charm every few minutes all day long was leading to a rapid skill increase for him in that area, as the tutorial cantrip did its job. 

The same thing with some very minor wards on his and Willow's houses, although they had reached an agreement, because of the work involved, for each one of them to shield their own homes. 

"Wills, slow down!" he called, as she dragged him off to her favorite stacks, all romance books for the look of it. No, she seemed equally torn to go to the computers and reference sections. 

Xander himself had allowed Willow to cajole his presence into these hallowed halls of learning because he had some definite goals in mind. One of those was to find a book on reading body language, as he'd had this nifty idea that he could use that to help out his flagging aura reading abilities. 

About the only thing the Codex said on that subject was to list its uses. The old mage apparently felt that subject a distant relation to actual magic, by which he meant spells and the construction and use thereof. Really, the only thing mentioned was that every single aspect of a living or magical thing could be seen in its aura, if you could make sense of what you were seeing and saw clearly enough that is - both of which were hard states to achieve. 

That meant it was possible, in theory, to go diagnosing someone's physical and spiritual health, determining any magic in effect upon them... or reading their emotions. 

Now, color him brilliant, but Xander had to ask himself this: what about any given person changed faster than their emotions? So, that was most probably the source of the near-continual state of color flux and pattern shift he saw. And, if he could figure out a way to come to an understanding of that from a more solid angle, say by reading their postures and so on, that should give him a handle for sorting that out, as well as answer such questions as 'why did Willow have colors that he saw in no one else - color patterns that, as near as he could tell, reacted very strongly to HIM of all people' and, on a possibly related note, 'why did that portion of her aura flare when she was standing before him framed by the romance stacks?' 

Any aid in figuring this out would be welcome. 

So, of definite items on the agenda, one was to hunt down some good books on reading people so he could get another frame of reference to help him sort out all of that. Second was almost certainly to dig up a medical book or two, as that too would assist him in deciphering what he saw in people's auras. 

About the only regret he had now about what Mr. Mage Dude had done to him was the maddening holes left in his knowledge, preventing him from using so many of his abilities. 

Case in point: Seeing auras was one thing, but understanding what he saw in them was, well, you know, kinda sorta useful too? 

Exhibit B would be the technomancy, techno-pagan stuff. Okay, so maybe Mr. Mage Dude had been of the impossibly mistaken impression that Xander was a model student and thus knew beforehand about all that basic science stuff. But, since that was most emphatically NOT the case, Xander was finding he had a capstone without a pyramid under it, and building the darn thing was looking to be a very daunting task. 

Thus, Willow to the rescue. 

It had been two weeks now since Mr. Mage Dude's visit, and they were feeling more comfortable in their martial arts classes. The trio were far too raw to be able to see any reliable measures of their own progress so far, but their teachers appeared quite happy with them, so that was a good sign, and they did not stint on practice. 

The archery was not going so well, but then they had neither a good teacher nor any reliable books to draw from, so it was pure experimentation and trial and error on their parts, which was not going so fast. 

Their mutual bike rides were becoming slightly less onerous and they had found quite a few spots in the open areas around town that made for great views or fun places to frolic with frisbees. So they'd taken to having picnics. 

After having sprouted hundreds of grape seeds, apricot pits, apples, limes, cherries, and watermelon seeds from their lunches, as well as acorns they found just lying about, and even once a bunch of grain because Willow wanted to try wheat grass in her smoothie, Xander had felt he'd fully mastered the sprouting cantrip and went on and constructed from theory the next step up in that department, which was able to grow a young plant about a foot taller. 

So, on their bike rides they were now revisiting plenty of their previous lunch locations so Xander could practice his new spell on those old seeds, granting him rapid progress, at least in that one narrow area, while Willow had started to sprout their leftover lunch seeds herself. 

Xander and his friends had also developed a new game. 

In the past week he had been typing out a substantial amount of the Codex, which even Willow found to be dull. So he was, at the same time, producing what he liked to call 'Xander's Translation of the Annotated Codex of Magical Thought' in between boughts of Jesse hitting him with a rolled up comic book for his pomposity whilst proclaiming this aggrandized title. 

The other two called it the Xander-Dex, and Willow devoured it shamelessly, cherishing every line as he distilled Throckmorton's theories into a readable form while doing his best not to diminish the value of the substance. When he did leave a point unclear, however, Willow was then able to go to the original version he'd typed out for clarification. Then, after struggling through that mind-numbingly dull work for comprehension, she had him add those concepts to the Xander-Dex, thus editing his work for quality as they went along. And he was, while doing so, internalizing and processing far more of the original Codex than he had even thought possible. 

With the constant practice, Xander was even beginning to learn how to be a decent typist. But it was Jesse who had seized upon a few minor, educational cantrips that his best bud had typed out and started their latest game. 

There was, in the Codex, a collection of extremely minor jinxes that could cause an unwary target to belch, blink, cough, giggle, nod, scratch, sneeze, twitch, wink or yawn, and once these had reached the Xander-Dex, they had caught Jesse's interest in a most extreme way so he had exerted himself to master them all, chiefly using his two friends as targets, who had responded in kind, leading to a furious few days of involuntary faux pax during classes and other embarrassing situations before they called a mutual truce. 

Now Jesse was eagerly awaiting the coming of school so he could use those spells on bullies during classes. But they still found plenty of use for them whenever the trio went out to, like, cruise the mall or whatever. Having learned all he could from massive over-use of the belch cantrip, Jesse was already deep into studying up on the specific theories needed to create the next level - the fart spell, something with which he was determined to have endless amusement. 

But he dreamed of even greater accomplishments down the road, the Holy Grail of minor jinxes, the ability to make jocks wet themselves. 

It was his dream. 

Well, that and the ability to make Cordelia fall madly, passionately in love with him, but so far none of their educational cantrips dealt with that. So Jesse didn't even know where to start on building that spell. 

The level of complexity and utility of the cantrips they were using was very small, the equivalent to either having on hand a small tool that you didn't actually have on hand (like a dab of makeup, for the cosmetic illusion Xander had been using, or a whoopee cushion for the fart spell), or about ten minutes of work on something you could already do an ordinary way. 

Neither applied to dating Cordelia. Pity, as Jesse claimed it would relax him greatly when he eventually got the queen of his dreams to feed him peeled grapes while his head rested in her lap. 

But of those traumatized youths, Xander was finding his fulfillment in trying to master all of that knowledge poured into his head, while Willow seemed to draw her strength from Xander and his increasing capacity. However, Jesse had found his peace by joining Bible study groups and was now getting along great with his minister while he sought solace in the pleasing word of God. 

That was doing a favor for all of them, as Jesse came away from those meetings radiating a sense of peace that helped stabilize all of them. It did not stop him from dreaming of one day creating a minor jinx to cause a jock to vomit, however. 

Bless those involuntary reflexes, and the spells that could trigger them. 

Of course, none of these would work on the undead, but what do you expect from a minor training cantrip meant for little kids? They weren't all that useful in a fight in any case, as people all pumped up on adrenaline would be far too likely to resist them. 

Which was a pity, really, as that left their only purpose embarrassing others. 

No, the jocks and bullies of Sunnydale High were not all that likely to enjoy the upcoming school year. Both Xander and Jesse were, independently, working on counterspells for prank cantrips in expectation of the trio's truce breaking down, however. And Xander was working on a spell to give an underwear wedgie, so he'd have a useful tool for when the Prank Cold War turned hot. 

Willow had made her own discovery in the form of the stitch spell, overlooked by Xander as he couldn't imagine any real use for it. That was an error on his part, however, and she was quick to point out how that handy sewing cantrip could be used both to mend old or worn clothes (something he had plenty of), but also to embroider things like, oh, say, crosses onto outfits. 

That gave the spell instant meaning to the vamp-shy trio, who wanted their vamp-proof suits as fast as they could be obtained. But that wasn't the sort of thing you find off the rack at K-Mart, and until Xander's Uncle paid them for their polishing they probably couldn't afford it anyway, even if they did. 

Jess wanted to cover the whole town in crosses, however Xander didn't think that would work. 

Throckmorton had very little to say about holy symbols, but Van Hellsing's journal had been far more informative. He'd stated authoritatively that any given symbol's potency was derived from three factors: the faith of the person who blessed/prepared it, the belief of the person using it, and how widespread was the religion it represented, with weakness at any one of those points still yielding a usable object, and one person could both prepare and use a symbol at need. 

Thus, someone from an otherwise dead Roman cult could prepare and use a medallion to hold a vampire at bay in spite of it not being a major religion anymore, if he had a strong belief. Or your ordinary Joe on the street could use a cross the same way, and if it was prepared by a faithful clergyman Joe could be nearly an atheist and still have it work (thus a reason crosses were so very popular). 

Van Hellsing had cautioned that you couldn't use any symbol you personally disagreed with, so a true atheist was out of luck. Also, not every dude with a cross was going to be thwarting vampires, because if he prepared it himself and had no faith he was not going to get any results out of it. It would also be a nasty (albeit short) surprise for a guy without faith to learn that his friendly neighborhood priest was just holding down the job for the money, not out of any religious commitment, and the things he blessed no better than a toy bought at K-Mart. 

So if a nearly non-religious tailor sewed crosses onto Willow's jacket he would not be doing her any favors. Likewise, a person would have to be very faithful indeed to spray paint crosses on the doors to all of the tombs in town and have them work out anywhere near as good as an individual cross would be with an even halfway faithful person holding on to it. 

They couldn't say with any authority that they even know anyone with that kind of faith. Actually, it was worse, as they couldn't say with any certainty they knew of a priest with ANY faith! There wasn't some convenient meter to plug into the back of their heads that you could use to check, after all. 

Spooky, really, as the only test they knew of kind of involved risking your life trying to hold off a vampire with a symbol that may or may not be any good. 

On the other end of the scale, opposite the cheap junk and dodges, the best examples of the most effective symbols would obviously be strong in every department. So a strong Rabbi giving an orthodox Jew a blessed Star of David would see some serious performance out of that, as Judaism was still very much a major religion. 

When he'd learned that, Jesse had extended an invitation to the duo to join him in his Bible study classes, citing it as a self-defense measure every bit as useful as Xander's martial arts classes or Willow's healthy diet. 

Seeing the logic of his viewpoint, they'd agreed. Even Willow, who had replied (on being questioned) that most of the Bible was the Old Testament, and that was the same either for Christians or Jews. They both read and believed in the stories of Moses, Abraham, Joseph being sold into Egypt, and all of that. 

In fact, Jesus Christ had lived his whole life as a good Jewish boy. He was born and raised as one of the covenant people and had never once broken the law given to Moses... although, he may have pointed out a time or two that the additions to that law the Jews came up with on their own were not quite as valid as the ones God carved into a rock with His finger. 

There were some, many in fact, who maintained that the only reason Judaism and Christianity were two separate faiths was because of a political schism at the time of Jesus, instituted by a Sanheidren who hadn't wanted to hand over power to him by recognizing him as the rightful Messiah. 

So she felt fine with Bible study for all of them, as you could not have faith in something if you didn't know what it was. And the only faith they could truly count on for preparing symbols and all that was their own. 

And, speaking of study brought them back to the Sunnydale Public Library. 

"Hey, Wills, I'm going to be..." Xander trailed off as his third eye fed him information he didn't want to believe. 

"What is it, Xander? What's wrong?" The redhead looked up at him in obvious concern. 

Xander grabbed his Willow by the arm and led her slightly deeper into the romance stacks, to which she responded by an ever increasing blush. He was standing sort of close to her and her thoughts were sliding into babble. 

"Um, Wills? Did you know there were magic books in this library?" 

"Huh? What do you mean?" she looked up at him, puzzled that he would say such a thing about her natural environment. 

To his aura sight it was obvious. Magic things had a bright glow like a light bulb compared to the background appearance of the general non-living shelves full of books, and several of those books had the glow of magic, some slight, as though they merely detailed spells, others bright, as if the books were, themselves, enchanted. 

A few minutes wandering around proved it was true in all sections of the library. There were many books, hidden in among the normal ones, that had obvious signs of magic. There was no way it could be accidental. 

"So, is it just me or has this place always had magic and I just never knew it?" he asked at last as they returned to where they'd started. 

"I've never found any before," Willow offered comfort in spite of being confused herself. 

"Well, the Amazing Xander-Vision says that at least one of the librarians is a witch, and we've got magic books scattered all over the place, in and among the rest of the collection." 

"Look, there are some magic ones right here." Her best friend indicated a space on the shelf among the hardback romance novels, when Willow had always preferred the paperbacks (easier to hide that you were reading one). 

"Here, you stay there. I've got some things I've got to look for." The teen left her without so much as a chance to squeak her surprise, or dismay at being abandoned there in the romance stacks. 

Standing where Xander had left her, Willow looked down at the books on the shelves and saw the library had five copies of the 'Magic of Life, Magic of Love' by Casanova, and three copies of 'The Intimate Diary of Versailles' on the shelves. 

Willow picked up the former, turning the cover over in her hands, not certain if she dared to open it. When she was standing thus, Amy Madison came upon her and said, "You shouldn't use that." 

"Eep?!?" cue instant petrified-from-embarrassment teen trying to hide what she was looking at, as Willow shrank upon being discovered. 

Amy just pushed her friend down into a seat. "Look, we've known each other since kindergarten, right? So that makes you a friend, and friends don't let friends fall prey to sex fiends. That book," Amy pointed to the tome on sex magic that Willow was still desperately trying to hide under the reading desk. "is all about how to use sex magic for fun and profit, while that book," this time she pointed out the many copies of 'The Intimate Diary of Versailles' on the shelf, "is all about how to take advantage of the people who use the spells in the book you're holding." 

Amy swept her hair back out of her face and sat beside her friend, closely so they could whisper. "Look, my mom told me all about it. I don't know from trying to use them personally, or anything. But according to her there are three books that between them contain all but a very small fraction of the sex magics ever created (say 94 percent, but nobody really knows for sure), as they were all compiled and recorded during the peak of the 'Golden Age of Sex Magic', where the spells were in common use, easy to find, and research ran high. New spells and rituals were created and old parts of the ancient art restored from obscurity by an interested elite that had nothing better to do. But our library here carries only two of the Golden Three." 

"The first is that one," the blonde pointed to the book Willow was still holding and trying to hide, although nearly forgotten as her attention was no longer so much on her embarrassment anymore. "Written by Giacomo Casanova, who is THE Casanova of legend. It's his first one, and he wrote it when he was young and flush with success, calling it the 'Magic of Life, Magic of Love'. It details all of the then-common rituals young lovers could use to gain powers, bond to each other, etc; a near encyclopedia from the 'here is the art, have fun with it' perspective. The book is still quite common in some circles, having been reprinted and imitated many times. So far nobody's ever written a better 'How To' book for sex magic than he did." 

The blonde tossed her hair back over her shoulders where it belonged before leaning in close to conspiratorially whisper, "Giacomo Casanova wrote two of the Golden Three books on sex magic, and was once arrested in his home city of Venice by the inquisition on charges of witchcraft - charges on which he was convicted! He wrote over twenty books in total, and died as a librarian, just like my mom is now. She works in this place, and I'm summering as an intern. Anyway, Casanova's other book, which she won't let me see a copy of until I'm sixteen, was entitled 'To My Younger Self', and he wrote it in his early seventies (and the last years of his life, when he was alone and disliked). She told me it's a much darker work, containing warnings of all of the darker aspects of sex magic, perfected by a thrill-seeking, power-corrupt, occult-practicing aristocracy in control all over Europe. In it he warns of hidden sides of sex magic, developed to control and dominate your lovers, and to which he, in his youth, had fallen victim. After having his fortunes ruined many times by these predators, he had sought for counters and defenses to their techniques, even developing some of his own. But, by the time the book was ready, those same predatory sex-mages that he sought to teach the young to defend against had begun being toppled all over Europe by the revolutions and wars being fought, destroying the ancient aristocracies that had turned sex magic into a tool of control and domination in the first place. Thus, copies of his second book are rare and hard to find as those very classes of people it was designed to defend against ceased to exist, on the whole. And, like I said, our library here doesn't have a copy, nor will mom let me use hers. I haven't even gotten a chance to look at it, really. She says that she won't until I'm sixteen and a cheerleader. How unfair is that?" 

Willow, sitting there looking vaguely scared, did not have a comment at that time, something which Amy politely ignored, going on just as if she had been agreed with, "Anyway, nothing in the first book is safe to use without the second, because the third is so dangerous. It's called 'The Intimate Diary of Versailles', and contains a great selection of what the nobles liked sex magic for. Yes, there are a few rituals using sex as a source of power, even some abilities that Casanova's first handbook skipped over or he didn't know about to record. However, the majority of the content is about all those things he warned about in his second book - how to take advantage of lovers, use people's affections, warp and take control of them through the very sex rituals they had performed, and all of the dark and nasty stuff that turns a person into a possession of the sexual predator using the dark side of the arts, compiled by the practitioners of this seedy side, in the court that was the very capital for sex magic among the aristocracy that perfected it." 

Amy pointed to the bookshelf. "As you can see, we carry many copies, which I think is strange. You wouldn't give anyone you liked a copy of the Diary of Versailles, as it is a handbook on how to be a very nasty person. So I don't know why we have any. But actually, we have six. I know one is undergoing repairs for stains, so I guess two are checked out right now. That means if you even THINK about using the arts in the first book, someone will be waiting to take advantage of you, which is sick and the real reason I came by to warn you when I saw you headed this way with Xander. Is he your boyfriend now?" 

Willow just blushed uncontrollably, unable to speak. 

Amy gave her a sly smile. "Well, tell him you'll have to wait, as the best stuff has to be performed when you're still a virgin, and you don't dare do ANY of them until I can somehow wheedle out of mom that second book on how to protect yourself from the rituals and stuff in the third." 

The red-faced redhead made some sort of interrogatory squeak, while gingerly pointing a shy finger to the copies of the other sex book. 

Amy raised an eyebrow. "The Diary of Versailles? It's actually a compilation of hundreds of spell books, grimories, and private journals left over by the noble elite, compiled for Napoleon and presented to him on his coronation as emperor as a gift by a courtesan who had been a part of the noble court scene and wanted him to start the sex-capades all over again by saying, 'look at how much fun we had taking advantage of those ignorant young folks!'" 

The blonde shared a secret, girl-to-girl snort of dissatisfaction as she told in hushed whispers, "Mom says it's ironic, I call it sad, but the existence of a catalog of spells intended for taking advantage of the users of the innocent side of sex magic, taking control over bonds formed between them, breaking them, and otherwise toying with people who were in it for the fun, has mostly prevented any sort of wide scale resurgence of the use of sex magic. Any time a group tries, sooner rather than later somebody with a copy of the Diary of Versailles shows up and ruins it for everyone. The scarcity of Casanova's second book means most such groups are vulnerable, and having heard her stories and read a few spells out of the Diary, I don't DARE do any of the fun stuff until I've somehow read a copy of the one we're missing." 

Willow was beet red and in the process of making a few vowel sounds. 

Amy just shrugged. "The originals of all three are naturally in French, and that might prove a difficulty to us, but mom says that it just means that the students who take French in High School have more fun than anyone else. So of course I am planning to take it, even though mom says that she has hold of an excellent translation into English. 

"Now, I know it sounds silly but Casanova actually sounds like he was a really nice guy. I mean, the first line of the story of his life goes 'I am writing My Life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.' " 

She giggled, but Willow remained petrified. 

"Now..." Amy paused, looking fretful and chewing her bottom lip a second before continuing in a hopeful tone, "You know about the vampires, right?" 

Willow gave a small and terrified nod, bowled over by the things the other girl was discussing so openly. 

"Good," the blonde sighed in relief. "That makes things much easier. Now look, there are two things the books on sex magic kind of gloss over that apply to our situation in this town. The first mom says is that it is a great way of dealing with the stress of living in Vampire central, and keeps you very relaxed. The second is that sex magic is VERY much focused on the essential energies of life and living, and are also a great deal of fun. But according to my mother, when you are 'high' on that energy just after a ritual you don't taste so good to vamps - like food that's just way too rich and you'd spaz yourself to death for tasting, so given a choice most of them would go for other targets that aren't a human equivalent of a six pack of Jolt colas and a double handful of hot chili peppers - the eye watering kind." 

Amy sighed once more, dropping her hold on her friend. "The DOWN side, she says, is that sex magic is very much the drug trip of the magic world, with all the stuff that entails - it's highly addictive, it will burn you out, and so on." 

Sitting there a few moments while Willow's heart fluttered and her face stayed fire engine red, Amy recomposed herself and stood up with a smile, dragging the poor redhead behind her. "Did you know that you are the first girl my age I know who is able to use magic? There's so much more we have to talk about! C'mon! I want to show you this nifty book I found on cosmetic spells, and makeovers!" 

"Eep!" 

End of Chapter Four 


	5. Chapter 5

The Knights of Scooby   
Chapter Five 

by Lionheart 

---- 

"So, Amy is a witch, huh?" Jesse asked as they were all once again gathering at their martial arts studio of the day. 

"Yup. So she says. Her mother too from what I saw," Xander agreed, wincing as he recalled the ten minute lecture the blonde had given him about why he had to wait before he and Willow could be intimate, essentially repeating all she'd told Willow before, and causing the Xand-man to wonder if a man could actually die of embarrassment. How anyone could be so frank on such a topic would mystify him forever. 

And she'd gone and told him in front of Jesse, too! 

Although in a way it was lucky, as the terminally shy Willow never could have braced herself enough to convey that same information to her male friends, and it was something that they could agree, objectively, that they needed to know. Although now Amy seemed convinced that he and Willow were dating. 

From her point of view it was obvious. I mean, if you go together to that section then what else could it mean? 

Well, there was no way he was going to brave another such 'talk' with the girl about anything remotely related to romance ever, ever again! So she'd just have to go on laboring under that mistaken impression for a while. 

"She did tell me that was what her mom was, that they were all witches, I mean, and then she had all sorts of things to say about spellbooks, and... eep!" the stream of comforting Willow-babble got cut off and the young girl flushed red as a rose, recalling her own 'private talk' with the girl. 

The two guys looked at each other. Before, Willow had always been Willow, but lately she'd been acting more as a... well, as a girl. 

It was disturbing, as she'd always been one of the guys before this. 

"And we are waiting for her... why, again?" Jesse asked, steering clear of the uncomfortable subject of a possibly female seeming Willow. 

Xander was glad of the evasion of the never-before-touchy subject of Willow and her odd behaviors. He shrugged. "Amy? She promised to meet us here with something that should help us learn martial arts. She didn't go into details." 

"Here she comes," Willow observed, once again a shrinking violet as she stole glances at Xander out of the corners of her eyes. 

Jesse observed this vital behavior nugget and resolved to tell Xander about it later. Apparently, their once genderless friend had decided to become female for a chance to crush on her oldest buddy. 

Jesse silently placed a hand on his heart and turned his eyes heavenward for the troubles this would likely cause. 

Amy Madison spilled out of her mother's car, which subsequently drove away, and rushed over to the trio of teens waiting before the studio, waving a set of bracelets identical to one that she now wore on her own wrist. "Hello guys! I only got my mom to agree to let me go to this as a good way to get limber and ready for cheer practice in school next year, and she insisted that I also sign up for a gymnastics course, to which you're all welcome to come, of course. But anyway, once I'd agreed to that she gave me these!" 

"What are they?" Willow asked, looking down at the little woven cord bracelet in her hands that Amy had given her. 

"Ape charms," the blonde girl answered, having finished giving similar ones to the two boys. "As in 'to ape another's actions' or in plain English to copy the movements of someone else. They're pretty useless in most circumstances, as you have to get at least two people doing the same motions at the same time in just about the same place, and even then they only work if one person is wearing the master version and others the student." 

She held up her wrist and the bracelet thereon. "The ones we've got on are the student versions, so we get to copy the motions of whoever wears the master. Only when you want to, of course, otherwise we'd be walking into walls and falling down stairs and stuff like that." 

"And... I find myself still waiting for the point," Jesse snarked. 

Amy rolled her eyes, flouncing her shoulders. "Guys! This is a CLASS! Duh! We all get to stand around imitating the teacher, then he has to correct all of the mistakes we're making. The sooner you get over making mistakes, the better you get, the faster! My mom used these to help train her squad back when she was the Cheer Queen of Sunnydale High. They won awards." 

After finding nothing he couldn't understand in the little cord, and that it all agreed with what she'd said, Xander nodded and put the little bracelet on. "It does what she says it should do. This will really help us on our katas, so long as we've got a teacher with us. Sparring would be different, as you'd throw a punch instead of a block when your enemy threw a punch - presuming you had a sparring partner wearing the master, of course. But we haven't gotten to that level yet, so this is pretty much exactly what we need right now." 

The other two nodded, then followed him in putting on their bracelets. 

"Well, it's not perfect," Amy admitted. "Ape charms will help you learn the routines, like how to punch or block or kick, etc, but they won't give you the instincts - like WHEN to block or kick or whatnot. Nor do they give judgment, the ability to spot holes in another's defenses, and so on. It's all just going to be the muscle memory, but that's what takes the longest to build anyway! So it's way chill that my mom loaned them to us!" She started to bounce inside. 

"Oh, and don't break them," Amy instructed, pausing just on her way to go enter the building and sign up for class. "They are braided out of gorilla hair, and mom says that if one breaks I have to gather the hair and braid a replacement myself. Ick!" 

Then, the young blonde skipped off into class, where she confronted the teacher about signing up, at the same time presenting him with a little ape pin, which she put in his jacket herself as a present. 

The eyes of the tiny figurine started to glow, and the instructor lost all desire to remove the pin, in spite of the general avoidance of jewelry seen in most martial artists (as it wasn't practical to give your enemy holds). 

They felt the teeniest little bit guilty about it, but resolved that they were paying to learn from him, and all it should do was accelerate the process. Xander whispered the same memorization spell that Mr. Mage Dude had used on him over himself and his friends, now including Amy, to help them be able to recall later what they merely copied now, and they went forward to have the most productive class that any of them could recall. 

That would be repeated for all of their martial arts classes that day, Amy giving each of the instructors a little ape pin as she signed up. The teens felt so elated over what they'd learned, and how fast, with her help, that Willow had already agreed and was dragging Xander and Jesse along to join the girls in a gymnastics class before either of them could find the heart to disagree. 

Then, once the boys had gotten there and seen the multitude of trim girls in leotards cavorting about the building, they decided to stay, going further into debt with Willow as she paid for their lessons there for them. 

---- 

Xander plucked at the fabric of Jesse's shirt, using a handy cantrip to turn it red. "Well, my Merry Man, it looks like you finally have an outlaw name. You, my dear flunky, shall be Will Scarlet, to go with your new color of attire and your regrettable lack of upstanding morals with regard to tavern wenches." 

"Ah, tavern wenches," Jesse sighed with a smile. "My great weakness." 

"They are, too," Xander teased, also with a grin. "If Queen C catches you with one you had better bet you'll never be seeing the inside of her royal chambers. Torture chambers, maybe, but not the bedroom." 

"Dude, has it not yet struck you as wrong that we are attending as many classes now as we do during a school year?" Jesse changed the subject. 

"I look at those luscious babes during gymnastics and cannot agree with you that this is a bad thing," Xander quipped, smacking his lips. 

"Okay, point conceded," His best bud agreed with a nodding twitch of his head. 

They'd found one other problem that Amy's mother hadn't mentioned about those Ape charms, and that was that they didn't allow for any difference in the fitness of the bodies of the persons who were performing the actions. So, copying a teacher who was both faster and stronger left them very, very sore afterwards as their bodies weren't used to handling that sort of load. And what could happen if they'd started off studying yoga this way was too ugly to describe. 

Xander found himself forced to dip into healing spells to prevent them from having to miss classes. So, faster development of muscle tissue and so on was a top priority. 

Luckily, the book Xander had memorized on combining magic and martial arts by a Japanese sorcerer had spells for improving martial arts quickly, learning as if you were younger, more flexible and teachable, copying the movements and kata of a willing instructor in different ways than the Ape charm did (but only up to his level of competence), and internalizing those lessons more easily, getting more value for time and practice. And, most useful of all for their present situation, multiplying the speed at which your body could be conditioned, making it more fluid in accepting changes as demanded by the new requirements placed upon it. 

However, that too was limited, chiefly by caloric intake. One had to have fuel for the body to use to build anything, and they were so far behind what they needed to be that they had a lot of catching up to do. 

But a body could only process food into muscle so fast. 

Once again Xander had to delve into slightly higher realms of magic, creating metabolism enhancing spells, based on the sprout cantrip, to help them build muscle and stuff more quickly, so their exercise could bear more fruit. 

Of course, this meant that a high protein diet was necessary-ville for all of them, and they ate amounts they could hardly believe, two or three times what was once their usual helpings. Willow seemed embarrassed by it, but Amy went all sparkly and ranted over how she could have her cake and be thin, too. 

Speaking of the girls, they came out of his uncle's house bearing serving plates to the picnic table set up there in the yard. Today was fried chicken, with the Willow-approved fruits and salads on the side... plus a generous tub of potato salad that even she would dip generously into. 

Jesse, having cantriped his own clothes back to green, touched Amy's blouse and suddenly she was the one wearing red from head to toe. "Actually, I think I'll be Alan-A-Dale, minstrel and therefore babe magnet by definition. So since we have a scarcity of female Merry Person names, we'll loan one to Amy, and she can be Jill Scarlet - if she can ever learn to fire a bow without thwacking herself in the boobs with the string, of course." 

Amy slapped at him at the reminder of that painful memory, but didn't manage to hit him as he dodged away clean. 

"Fine!" She spat back, then smirked as she retorted with, "Then it's you boys who will be handling lunch preparation from now on, until we girls have caught up on our archery practice!" 

The boys looked at each other, then prostrated themselves in weird bows. "Please, forgive us, Oh Mistress of Cooking Utensils!" 

"No." Amy smugly replied, primly sitting herself down to the meal. They were, all of them, feeling quite starved, so objections ended while consumption of food began. 

Apparently, Willow was far more desperate for a female friend than any of them had supposed. No sooner did Amy show any signs of accepting her than the lonely redhead glommed onto her and welcomed her into their group. And, with Willow so certain they needed her, who were Xander and Jesse to argue? 

So, Amy had been welcomed into the Scooby Gang. 

And had promptly proved why there are so few women archers mentioned in history, or why the word Amazon literally means "One Breast" by nearly taking off a nipple on her first attempt at archery. 

No serious damage was done. But by all reports the pain was on a level with what women so delight in causing to men when they strike below the belt. 

Jesse's offering to kiss it to make it better hadn't helped. 

Amy had immediately, on recovering and glaring properly at Jess, launched a request for crossbows. 

Unfortunately, there was a problem with that. 

While the crossbow required less skill and strength than an actual bow, it had two great weaknesses: One was they were expensive, and there was no way the teens could afford one. Nor could Xander make one, as he was still a far cry from that, only just beginning to learn how to be a woodworker as yet. 

The other, and potentially more damaging in the long run, was a pathetic rate of fire. It took so long to load and reload a crossbow that in many situations all you had was a one-shot weapon, and that was only if you'd already cocked and loaded it before the fight. 

Which was not good enough, not NEARLY good enough for their purposes! 

Accuracy being what it was they needed a heck of a lot more shots than that just to have a good chance of scoring one hit in a vamp's heart. Better still if they could drop two or three apiece before it became a fist fight. 

According to Sun Tzu, an archer ought to be most effective at about forty yards, and they were already toying with the concept of using arrows to vex some vamps enough to charge, where they could be met with holy water and spears, or some other trap they were still working out the specifics of. 

But the dang things moved fast enough that with a crossbow there wouldn't be enough time to reload before they were on you. While, on the other hand, the ability to stake two or three of them with the much more rapid bow had a great deal of appeal. 

"YEOUCH!!" Willow, trying to show Amy the way to shoot, concentrated too much on the details, got mixed up, and proved that Amy was not the only girl to ever twang her breast in a bowstring. 

---- 

Xander's first trip to the public library had been more or less derailed by a series of discoveries, including that Amy Madison was a witch, and the whole slew of events that added her to the Scooby Gang. 

Now he was going back to get his first list of chores done, and, like a moose trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat, was certain, 'This time for sure!' 

Never having had a library card before he applied for one. Amy had told him all of the papers he'd needed to bring, so that was over with quickly, then it was off to the stacks. 

First on the agenda was a book or two on body language, as he'd originally intended. Second was a book or two on medicine. This wasn't a medical library by any means, nor did he have any expertise in that area, so he was forced to choose a couple of books more or less at random, hoping that he could make some sense of them. On a whim, he also grabbed some on natural medicine, hoping that would mesh well with the healing magic he already knew. 

Sitting down at a table to page through them, he discovered both of the books on medicine he'd grabbed were utterly useless to him, all about how this machine or that drug could solve problems he didn't have (which was a good thing, as he didn't have access to the machines or drugs, either). But they did teach him, by bad example, a fair amount about what kind of books he was after in the medical department. 

He needed something, in essence, much like the U.S. Army Survival Manual, only this time as pertaining to field surgery and medicine. Ok, there was already a section on first aid in the survival manual, even a beefy section if you wanted to look at it that way, but still he needed more. 

Both of the herbal medicine books were far more useful to him, particularly in regards to discerning health problems that could color the aura, and that put him in a frame of mind willing to explore those topics a little more deeply. 

One thing he did discover, while skimming through medical books to help him understand auras better, was that what mundane medical science was best at, magical healing is worst at, and vice versa. So he resolved to begin a more serious study of anatomy and mundane medicine as a whole, spending a couple of hours trying to select something before almost giving up, as he didn't know how to judge a good book on this topic from a bad one. 

On his initial pass through he'd already decided that the herbal stuff seemed much more able to take on some things, while surgery was better for others - notably the trauma branch of medicine. But pouring a bunch of drugs into your body to hide symptoms without curing the root cause seemed a waste of time. So pharmacology, and those things that leaned heavily upon it, got neglected in his great book grab. He already knew spells that did that stuff better and didn't have side effects, nor could you overdose on them or get addicted to it. 

Realizing he was getting sidetracked yet again, and resolving that if the library was proving this useful he'd have to visit more often, Xander redirected his efforts into finding out about the rest of the subjects on his 'want to investigate' list. 

As he had suspected, they had copies of nearly every text used by the local high school, and those they didn't already have beaten, well worn copies of they were expecting a shipment of either before or early in the school year. 

Now, once more color him brilliant, but he'd had enough of school already to know that most of that dreadful experience was teachers trying to cram a whole bunch of (what he'd felt was useless at the time) facts into your head via the route of rote memorization, and Mr. Mage Dude had accomplished more of that in one hour or less with him than all of his other teachers over a lifetime of ditching school combined. And at the very end of that hypnotism session had ordered him to recall all of it except for the mage himself. 

Well, those spells that put him in that state and caused the whole experience had been used as part of that session. He'd remembered them, even the one that had partially woken him into a hypnotic state to begin with, as his ears worked even when asleep, and those memories were available to the mind if it truly wanted them, so that had just been rolled in as part of the session he was told by the mage to recall. 

So, Xander was pretty confident of his ability to do the whole thing himself. Not TO himself, there seemed to be a definite teacher/student sort of angle to the entire thing and he didn't want to mess that up by exploring and perhaps cause all sorts of problems. The utterly passive nature of the guy in the role of memorizing stuff just seemed too much at odds with the idea of giving commands to memorize stuff to do any good trying to mix them. 

However, now he had friends. Xander believed that he could do the role of Mr. Mage Dude for one of them, saying whole 'memorize this' and 'memorize that' thing. Then, once that person had memorized those same spells, have them turn around and do the same to him, this time adding more details and filling in some of those gaps Mr. Mage Dude had left in his knowledge base. 

For example. Xander knew he needed a heck of a lot of math in order to do a credible attempt at some of those more nifty devices hinted at in the techno stuff he'd already memorized. 

High School taught math. 

He needed to know math, his school taught math, the library had the books on math they used to teach it, all the teachers would be asking was for him to memorize those books, and he had this really nifty scheme for memorizing a whole lot of books very quickly, completely and easily. 

This seemed to be a match made in heaven! 

But why stop there? 

There was no reason to stop short of his goal. He could be memorizing their school textbooks, including several generations of math, then retesting and qualifying for AP and honor courses. 

Not that he had any ambitions toward academic excellence, but he did need math and stuff at those levels and there was no reason to stint now when a few more books would save him so much grief and suffering later. 

No, he would be doing this partly to get authority figures off his back about his poor grades, partly to please Willow, granting her some company at the top of the grade curve, but also to learn the stuff he needed to know in order to go exploring those nifty techno-magical theories that he'd already memorized, and that were just so much dead weight in his mind until he could gain the needed know-how to use them. 

And there were other gaps he felt Mr. Mage Dude had left in his education. Things like both martial arts and magic were most excellent, however neither would give a guy a car and thus save him from bumming rides. 

So, a few auto-repair texts and service manuals, a charm spell here or there to get something from the junkyard and time in a shop, and he could restore himself a set of wheels he didn't have to push with his feet. 

As he'd suspected, but not dared hope, the library already had or could order about half of those books on martial arts he'd memorized. It'd save him tons of typing to check those out for when he took over the role and played Mr. Mage Dude for his friends. 

He'd found a brand new copy of the U.S. Army Survival Manual in the army surplus store. Xander grabbed some books on programming languages so he could recreate those computer animations he'd seen for the rest of the Scoobies. 

Now, there came an interesting conundrum there, in that he could not create those animations without having read the books, and he could read (well, not without months of effort) them well enough to learn those languages unless it was in one of those Mage Dude type sessions, and he couldn't actually do that on the receiving end until he'd already done a Mage Dude impersonation with one of his friends, first, who could then switch roles and lead him through learning the additional material. 

However, since that technomancy stuff wasn't presently useful to him anyway, he figured it and those animations it depended on could wait a round or two until the group got around to including them for his friends. 

What should probably not wait at all was that chart of the major and minor chakras. For Xander, it was an early warning system of things that went bump in the night. There were a whole lot of demons in town that were not vampires and didn't have to stay out of the sun. Some of them even blended in with the human population, looking just as normal as anyone else unless you had the aura sight granted by his third eye. 

So, he grabbed a book on how to draw, and went searching for one on hypnotism. 

He and Jesse had both read many science fiction books as well as comics. There was among those, one of the Stainless Steel Rat series, about how one time when Slippery Jim was infiltrating a world where he couldn't bring any of those spy gadgets he so liked, but he had used hypnotism to memorize the plans for them before going, then once he'd arrived he used another trance to let him draw those plans precisely. 

That sounded good to Xander, as he had a chakra chart to be recreating, and while he was at it there were illustrations in those guides that he couldn't produce by typing. He might as well get to those as well. 

End of Chapter Five 


	6. Chapter 6

The Knights of Scooby   
Chapter Six 

by Lionheart 

---- 

It had been another week, making in all three since the night Mr Mage Dude had changed his life. Xander's interlibrary loan books had arrived, and he'd been able to scrounge up most of the rest in between cruising the used book stores and making a few, very few, special orders for new ones. 

But he had, between all of that, managed to obtain copies of the normal stuff, the strategy and martial arts guides that Mr. Mage Dude had made him memorize. Plus, he'd also gotten a good one on archery. 

Xander had after many hours and aching fingers completed typing out the 'Annotated Codex of Magical Thought' and, by virtue of Willow's ceaseless encouragement and a resolve face here or there, been sufficiently motivated that he'd finished the Xander-Dex at roughly the same time. 

He'd be including both in her study session because, well, why not? And she got to be his first victim because she'd earned the priviledge. Jesse was too laid back to care about who went first, and Amy was going to be out the next two days going to Disney Land for some family reunion or other. 

Willow had been a little nervous. Xander, however, felt sure of their success. 

In the hypnotism section of the Sunnydale Public Xander had found an actual book of spells, including ones to recreate images seen by drawing them in a trance, so he'd created copies of those chakra charts and other things. 

He had also used one of those trances to write out longhand a copy of that so very extremely useful 'Ars Memoriae' scroll, but his arm had hurt so bad afterwards that he wouldn't be doing that again. Waaay too much cramping for a happy Xander to think about doing again. 

They would not be waiting for him to type out those other magic books, as there seemed to be no reason they couldn't go back and do them later in another session, just like Xander was hoping to have more than one. Similarly, the two books on how to fight and recognize demons would have to wait, as he'd only just started typing those and there was no way that his eager buds could be restrained until those could be completed. 

But those were really the only things he'd learned that he'd be leaving out for Willow's first time through this, and there should be opportunities to plug those holes up later. 

As Amy had already warned them, the books on sex magic available in the public library were just enough to get you in a serious world of hurt without any benefit, or way to stop that. And that seemed to be a general theme among all of the books on magic available there, with incomplete grimories, botched books on rituals, advanced stuff way too high end for beginners, and the usual selection of 'How To Get Possessed By A Demon Of Your Choice' tutorials making up the bulk of the volume of the library's magical selection. 

With few exceptions, every magical book in there seemed to be an entry into the: 'How Best To Royally Screw Up Your Life Using Magic' sweepstakes. Even the hypnotism book had a few such traps caused by incomplete explanations, but thankfully due to having dreamed the Codex now for three weeks, he'd been able to spot and remove them, filling in the blanks they hadn't covered. 

But what kind of maniac was in charge of stocking that library anyway? It was like they were TRYING to get people into trouble, making sure that they had no end of ways of stumbling into way more than they could handle! 

Xander had even found one more book by Percival Throckmorton in their selection, entitled 'Powers and Rituals' and as Amy explained it was the sort of book that can get you in nasty, nasty trouble, thrown in off the deep end, if you didn't already have an extremely firm grounding in the essential basics taught by his 'Codex of Magical Thought' (a work that virtually no one had a firm grounding in) plus another book by him that Xander didn't even know the title of. So the 'Powers and Rituals' book was infamous among magical folks for getting those who tried it into vast and uncontrollable amounts of trouble. 

And no, the library didn't have a copy of the Codex, or that other one. It was like a theme, to carry the advanced grade of magic without the beginning tutorials to get you safely started, in those rare cases when the books they carried weren't simply flawed to begin with. There was only enough of the simple stuff to serve as bait to the trap, drawing people in by making them think they could handle it. It was like the whole collection was calculated to cause mischief! 

Who was in charge of that anyway? 

The way Amy explained it, it was so bad her mom kept watch on those people checking out magic books so she could run a business on the side curing the various problems they'd inflicted upon themselves when they inevitably screwed whatever they were trying up. 

Still, they'd solve the mystery of why the public library was that way later. In the meantime, they already had more than enough to occupy their attention. 

So, early one morning, by pre-arrangement, Xander got up from the sofa in Willow's house, shutting off the alarm clock as he did so. Then he padded up the stairs to Willow's room and eased inside of the partially open door. 

Willow was sleeping peacefully. 

Xander paused at the entrance without meaning to, just drinking in the sight of her, his best friend since forever, her hair spread out upon the pillows and a peaceful smile on her face. 

He never got tired of the good feelings he felt as he watched her at rest. 

Well, on with the show and all of that. 

Xander's very first act was to remove those compulsions from Willow. He did not know exactly what they were, but on close observation decided that he'd probably never find out, as he couldn't yet translate the spell matrix and they'd been in place for so long that whatever behavior they gave her was almost certainly something he considered normal. 

Still, it was very satisfying to untie those magical knots on her soul, then to watch them dissipate into meaningless strands of ether. Somehow he knew he had done a very good deed, even if he didn't know precisely what. 

As Mr Mage Dude had done to him, the next spell did not so much rouse Willow from her sleep as waken her just enough to put her in a hypnotic trance, then a second to help in memorization. 

That was the easy part. Now it was time to approximate the rest as best he could, as his oldest friend's parental troubles were different from his own. 

All of them, even Willow, had discussed the kinds of things she needed to hear during this session tonight. 

"Willow Rosenberg, your parents do not determine your worth, you do, and you have become a beautiful young lady of infinite value. Your friends can see this, even if your parents do not. Do you understand this?" 

"Yes," Willow breathed that one word out as a joyful exclamation. Could he have looked so pleased when the mage told him this? Xander wondered. The light of joy illuminating her face was unmistakable. 

It made him feel oddly... something, but there was no time to figure it out now. 

Privately, Xander thought Ira and Sheila Rosenberg were fools for neglecting their daughter so badly. If only they'd paid her a little attention she could be so much more than she was right now. 

But then, they probably would have been upset at her hanging out with the poor kid with the drunk parents next door; so his win, her loss, and he felt a bit guilty over that. 

Grateful, but guilty. 

"You are a very gifted and talented young lady, but you need to develop your gifts and talents more. Do you understand?" 

"Yes," Willow breathed softly, still in rapture from the first question. 

"Good," quoth Xander. "I am going to do several things that you may find odd or distressing, but they will help you to aid your friends as they do what is needed. You do want to stay with them, don't you?" 

"Yes," said Willow, with conviction, even while blushing madly for some mysterious reason. 

"Um, excellent," Xander stumbled over his words, wondering why she would look so... enthused, even as she blushed deep scarlet clear down to where the flush disappeared under her pajama neck. Still, he pulled out the roll of computer paper onto which he'd used a trance to copy the 'Ars Memoriae' scroll. He gave it to her, saying, "You will start off by mastering this." 

In a trance, and with the memory spell helping, Willow was able to memorize the scroll in about a minute, roughly the same amount of time he had used to do the same thing. She set it aside, saying "Okay," when she was done, her blush having faded slightly as she studied. 

"Very good," the boy nodded, retrieving and rerolling the computer paper. "Have you selected a memory palace?" 

"Yes," the mesmerized teen stated blandly. 

"Build it," her friend commanded, "Then order your mind." 

Willow repeated Xander's long, slow blink and rapid eye movements. As she did so her blush finished fading away until it was all normal Willow-flesh there. No blush to be seen. "Okay Xander," she stated after her eyes snapped open. 

"Very good." The teen took a large poster, on the back of which he'd written the chart, and showed that information to her. "Now, I need you to memorize this chart of the major and minor chakras of the human body." 

When it took Willow only about a second to memorize that highly detailed and complex illustration he'd practically sprained his hand drawing, Xander knew that this was going to turn out to be a success. 

'Go Willow!' 

Although he knew the Latin incantation for pulling a big book out from a small pocket, Xander hadn't actually mastered that spell. He probably could've, but preferred for the moment doing as Throckmorton had said and concentrating on the basics, trying to master them before he moved on to anything more advanced - And he wouldn't be doing that if he couldn't see how it was doing him some real good. 

Amy had been a useful example there, as those cosmetic spells were very similar to the one he used to hide pencil-stab marks on the bodies in the morgue, and although hers were more advanced she had much more difficulty controlling them than he did with his small spell. As a result, he got better results within the more narrow scope and focus of his small spell than she did with her more powerful ones. 

When he had demonstrated this and explained some of theory behind why she had displayed some interest in the small one, although she did not seem fully convinced of the value of those tutorial cantrips as yet. 

Xander was almost certain she'd come around once Willow had memorized the Codex and was able to outshine her on the makeup side of things. Plus, there were minor hair-growth cantrips and shaving spells that he'd forgotten to tell her about, that he was certain ought to be convincing. 

While these thoughts had been going on, Xander had been busy retrieving the big stack of paper that was their newly printed copy of Throckmorton's 'Annoted Codex of Magical Thought', and instructing Willow to memorize it, just as he had done. 

Once she was through with that it was time to memorize his abbreviated version, the one they liked to call the Xander-Dex. There were no other magic books, nor any laptop, so they wound up the memorization with all of the nonmagical stuff he'd collected, all of which went fine. 

Xander found it strange that out of all that useful and safe magic stuff he'd learned, none of that was to be found in the Sunnydale Public Library, in spite of them having an otherwise large and wide-ranging selection of magic. Nor did he dare to ask for an inter-library loan on those topics, in spite of having Amy's mom serving as an in to the system. 

Maybe it was because of his parents, but he didn't generally trust authority figures, and something was up there with all of that magic stuff seemingly arranged specifically to cause trouble among people who didn't know better. And, there was also the fact that the police had to know about the vampire threat, yet they did nothing. 

No, whatever it was, he wasn't about to go advertising 'Here am I! I am a mage!' until he had a better idea of why certain things seemed so wrong. 

So, to make up somewhat for that lack, he'd elected to depart a bit from the schedual of what Mr. Mage Dude taught and had Willow read an unabridged 'Gray's Anatomy' and a 'New Home Medical Encyclopedia' set in four volumes. This was followed by an 'Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants' with a few other books on natural healing, hoping to build on that angle where normal medical means did what magic was worst at, and vice versa. 

This was already shaping up to be a lot, and Xander knew from experience that you didn't want to shove too much in at once as it would end up being a mess to sort through it. But still, they did not want to stint and possibly end up losing out on any advantages they might have otherwise obtained by a bit of boldness. And school was a bit of a headache anyway, better to get one now sorting through some books, and keep it, than suffer later and forget it. 

So, as an experiment, he had Willow go through each of her textbooks for the upcoming year, committing them all to memory to see if that would help. 

They'd finished off with the most comprehensive book on body language and posture reading that he'd been able to find, to help her decipher auras better (and a book he was hoping to memorize himself, in his next turn at this). 

Done with the books, having completed the selection he had available for this session, it was time for what he'd really felt the whole hypnotism thing was indespensible for: opening up her brow chakra. 

They'd tried this without the trance and it was just too hard to get a handle on. So, tapping into the body's subconscious ability to know what was really going on with itself seemed to be a great idea for spreading around the benefit of the amazing ability to expose vamps and stuff via aura seeing. 

Once more back to sticking closely to his program, Xander recited, "Willow, I want you to focus on your brow chakra, your Third Eye. When you feel it, open it. You know that you can," he ordered, secretly hoping this would work. 

"Its open," she said, after a moment. 

"Good," replied Xander, knees nearly shaking with concealed relief, "Now close it, and open it again." 

"Done," the redhead sighed, a few seconds later. 

"Look around," said her friend, still quoting the mage, "What do you see?" 

"Everything is glowing, almost... alive! So beautiful..." she breathed, but then frowned. "But there are trails of black smoke, everywhere," she said, then brightened, face softening as she smiled. "Your aura is sweet." 

Xander flushed a bit himself, recalling that his own aura cloaking cantrip still only lasted a short while, and must have run out while he slept waiting to get up and do this session with his redhaired best friend. 

He swallowed once before continuing. "The 'black smoke' is the energy of the Hellmouth, which shrouds the entire town, and can be seen or felt as far away as Los Angeles. The wards we've placed should reduce its influence, somewhat, but we should continue to create better ones." 

"I don't like that Hellmouthy stuff," Willow said with a completely honest face, which turned from a frown to adoration as she focused again on him. "But I like you. Your aura looks cuddly, and kind. It looks all warm and safe and comfy." 

She licked her lips rather innocently. 

Suddenly nervous, as this was NOT how he had pictured this going, Xander tried to rush ahead so he could skip the parts that were making him nervous. 

"But the Third Eye can also look inward." He desperately tried to change the subject. "Do that, now." 

"I see... ropes, all tied up in knots," she answered. 

Xander, who had been all prepared for her to find a pulsing light in a cage, just like he had seen, was caught off guard by this. 

So, he did the best he could. Hoping for the best, he told her, adapting from Mr. Mage Dude's words, "You must release that power that is constrained inside of you. So... untie the ropes. You know you can." 

All ready to tell her that she had taken her first steps into a larger world, Xander was NOT prepared for Willow to come rocketing off her bed to slam her body against his, wrapping both arms and legs around him to practically swallow his face in a desperate kiss, while shortly afterward beginning to make deep, satisfied noises within herself as she explored his face with her lips and ground her body against his. 

No, out of all of the possible things that might have happened, he was least prepared for that one. 

---- 

Xander Harris was one of the few teenaged males on Earth with enough guts to turn down an opportunity to get laid by a pretty, perky and very friendly and amorous witch. Partly this was his shock at the surprise of the event, partly not wanting to take advantage of Willow in her trance state, and partly it was Amy's utterly embarrassing, but in the end useful, lecture about the benefits of waiting until they were sixteen and had that copy of Casanova's second book her mother had promised her a chance to borrow. 

But mostly he just needed a chance to switch gears from a 'Hands Off! Best Friends!' Willow to a 'Randy Sex Kitten' Willow that was willing, even eager, to jump his bones. And it was quite a change to make. 

Frankly, on the 'Rock the fundamental underpinnings of Xander's world' scale it ranked up there with the first discovery of magic and vampires as a 'nailed from the blindside, wasn't expecting that' sort of experience. 

Not that he was in any way objecting. Even after having brought Wills out from her trance she was... oddly affectionate, cute and every bit as sexy and flirtatious as any man could dream. 

Nor did this look like it was going to go away any time soon. The young boy was enough of a thinker by now to recognize the possibility was that she had liked him for a long time, and those ropes had merely been a representation of her inability to express that desire for her insecurities. 

They'd known about the insecurities beforehand, and tried to resolve them from the start. The rest was... unexpected. 

Although a brief description of the benefits of those 'virgins only' spells and rituals had also been a factor in keeping his pants on since making that little theory. As Willow was making it quite plain that she wanted no part of the 'Hands Off! Best Friends!' category anymore. 

She was willing to keep the best friends part, but she wanted those hands most decidedly ON! And wasn't making any secret about that. 

He also couldn't hide behind the 'It's only a theory' defense, as she was now quite willing to tell him she'd known she'd had 'better than friends' feelings toward him since, like, forever, but had been too scared to say anything. 

A quick consultation with Jesse had returned with a "Duh! You mean you didn't know that?" and a similar call to Amy had yeilded hysterical laughter and the response that, yes, she'd known Willow was all hots for Xander all along. Since, like, kindergarten at least. 

It was only through a careful, reasoned explanation that they really did need to save themselves for later that prevented Willow from making Xander her own in a very personal and physical way before he could leave her room. 

One could hardly turn down any handy advantage on a Hellmouth, after all, and certain of those 'virgin only' sex rituals yeilded results that no other school of magic offered. 

So, safe for the present, except for the fact that the new 'Sex Kitten Wills' had demanded frequent snuggles and kissing as compensation. The discovery that she had curves had practically shorted him out. It was all day before he'd recovered enough thought processes to even recall that a world existed outside of her embrace and caresses. 

Oh, no. Xander was most thoroughly caught by his best friend before that day was done. They'd kept it all to the kissy and snuggly stuff, but there was no mistaking their relationship for what it once was anymore. 

They were dating, and a couple, and the only person at all surprised about this was Xander. It was giggles-ville for everyone else. 

She had her man, and Willow was going to keep him! 

---- 

Jesse's whole hypnotism thingy went off without a hitch, although Xander had Willow perform it as there was no chance he was going to risk getting all over smoochy with his OTHER best friend! 

No way, not happening. 

Still, Willow did a perfectly credible job on him. No amazing revelations or sudden boughts of leaping out of bed to reveal that he'd always been in love with the Pillsbury Dough Boy or anything. 

He had family problems, though different ones than either Willow or Xander. Being the only son of a single mom, with four younger sisters gave his house 'Excessive X-chromosome poisoning' as he liked to call it. 

But the 'Great Mental Health' quote they'd figured out to give him had been nothing more than a simple 'don't be afraid to work hard'. Pathetic, but he was not the subject of either great neglect or abuse, so he didn't truly need anything Earth-shattering. 

The whole 'look inside yourself' aspect of the event had also been different from either Willow's or Xander's. Jesse had seen a great suspension bridge, but it had loose and sagging cables and was incomplete, with piles of building materials sitting around unused. 

So, not knowing anything better to do, Willow had simply ordered him to finish the bridge, tighten the cables and complete it. 

They hadn't really known what that command had done, but Jesse reported feeling stronger and more able, so they trusted it was alright. 

The content they gave Jesse was practically identical to what Willow's had been, although using his textbooks, which were the same as Xander's, instead of hers, which were a bit too advanced for either boy's comprehension yet. 

Willow's own report of the textbook memorization had been favorable, so the other teens, including both boys but especially Amy, were all eager to get that advantage, as less struggling over horrible schoolwork meant so much more time for other, more enjoyable, things! 

End of Chapter Six 


	7. Chapter 7

The Knights of Scooby   
Chapter Seven 

by Lionheart 

---- 

Xander was happy. Ambitious, but happy, as he scanned over his proposed stack of books for his upcoming second 'memorize and learn' session. 

Amy had been very helpful in sneaking out a stack of their school textbooks from the public library's back door, far more than he could have checked out on any one card, or two or three for that matter. 

She was VERY interested in the results of their experiment, to see if learning all of those really would trivialize the workload they had to suffer next year. And so far the reports from Jesse and Willow said yes, they did, very much help in understanding (and thus inevitably decreasing the workload in) those otherwise droll and boring subjects. 

Xander too was VERY eager for some help conquering the worst demon of his life - schoolwork! 

So he was going to be kicking it up to the next level, not only defeating the dread textbook menace, but branching out into other areas of the detested 'study'. He already knew most of the martial arts books and stuff, so figured he had room in which to fit a few more school textbooks and things. 

Amy's mom had even gotten into the act, volunteering that the school's history books were utter crap, and that if they wanted to pass the English courses then the English textbooks they used weren't going to cut it. One was merely a storybook, and there was no point in memorizing that. 

Xander did pile on the math, including books for every level they had on that subject. The same for chemistry and biology. 

Home Ec. didn't have a textbook, so the best substitute they could find was a 'Joy of Cooking' printed in the early 1950's that told what the ingredients did and why to use them instead of just how much of what. Xander was further encouraged to learn that one because Amy was sticking by her guns in insisting that the guys handle some of the cooking so that the girls could get in extra archery practice. 

The Driver's Ed handbook was, of course, included. 

He'd also obtained the complete course of books (something that the school classes never got through, as it was quite a volume of material) of beginning and intermediate texts for the languages taught at Sunnydale so he could start to have a high school (by which I mean to say pitiful) level of use and comprehension of French, German and Spanish. 

The various shop classes did not have textbooks, but he'd managed to find guides on those anyway. 

"So, I don't get it. Why are you going to be memorizing textbooks for classes you aren't even taking?" Amy question dubiously as she beheld the tower of books Xander intended to learn, and had requested her help in obtaining. 

"Ah!" The teenaged boy adopted his 'wise sensei pose'. "Young Grasshopper, everything has a use. In the construction of houses for example, choice of woods is made. Straight unknotted timber of good appearance is used for the revealed pillars, straight timber with small defects is used for the inner pillars. Timbers of the finest appearance, even if a little weak, is used for the thresholds, lintels, doors, and sliding doors, and so on. Good strong timber, though it be gnarled and knotted, can always be used discreetly in construction. Timber which is weak or knotted throughout should be used as scaffolding, and later for firewood." 

"And how do you know about houses?" she doubted, looking at him askance. 

Continuing on in the role of 'wise Chinese guy' Xander bobbed his head. "I am glad you asked. There is no such thing as a bad student, only Cordelia. Oh! My mistake, excuse please. Meant to say no such thing as bad student, only bad teacher. Now, as you ask, Musashi spoke of carpentry to explain the Way of Strategy. The foreman carpenter allots his men work according to their ability. Floor layers, makers of sliding doors, thresholds and lintels, ceilings and so on. Those of poor ability lay the floor joists, and those of lesser ability carve wedges and do such miscellaneous work. If the foreman knows and deploys his men well the finished work will be good. 

"The foreman should take into account the abilities and limitations of his men, circulating among them and asking nothing unreasonable. He should know their morale and spirit, and encourage them when necessary. This is the same as the principle of strategy. 

"Like a trooper, the carpenter sharpens his own tools. He carries his equipment in his tool box, and works under the direction of his foreman. He makes columns and girders with an axe, shapes floorboards and shelves with a plane, cuts fine openwork and carvings accurately, giving as excellent a finish as his skill will allow. This is the craft of the carpenters. When the carpenter becomes skilled and understands measures he can become a foreman. 

"The carpenter's attainment is, having tools which will cut well, to make small shrines, writing shelves, tables, paper lanterns, chopping boards and pot-lids. These are the specialities of the carpenter. Things are similar for the trooper. You ought to think deeply about this. 

"The attainment of the carpenter is that his work is not warped, that the joints are not misaligned, and that the work is truly planed so that it meets well and is not merely finished in sections. This is essential. And before you say 'Yeah, whatever', know that chemistry is essential in making bombs to blow vampires or demons away. Math is the key to unlocking chemistry and other sciences. Biology is a component of medicine, and as such required if we ever need to heal our wounds without explaining where they came from. By taking in our language course materials ahead of time I can test out of that requirement and have one more slot available for fun classes. And the books on shop subjects are all about how to use tools to build things. Most of our cantrips function as tools, and we need things. I even have a book or two on sewing in there." 

Actually, he had three. 

What Xander did not choose to tell her at that time was that he would also be taking in most of the oddball stuff he'd given Willow last time, the books on body language, Gray's Anatomy plus those medical encyclopedias, herbal medicine, auto service and repair manuals and so on in addition to their whole collection of school texts, followed by one on how to draw, so he wouldn't be reliant on cramps and trances to recreate valuable illustrations anymore. 

Plus, there were a few thick, heavy books on computer languages. 

Also, each of their summer course martial arts classes had books they want the students to read. Not surprisingly, Xander had already memorized some of what was on those lists. But he wanted to memorize all of the rest, too. 

It was, all told, a very pretty pile. 

Honestly, even Xander had to admit that this was almost certainly too much, especially to load in all at once. He'd had enough troubles trying to take in all of what Mr. Mage Dude had taught him the first time, and he was still a far cry from saying that he'd absorbed it all. So it could very well be possible that he was premature in doing another session in the first place. 

The reason for his reckless haste was hard to explain. Like the roots of a tree, there were lots of little thin ones that individually did not mean much. By themselves, they were easily broken or dismissed as inconsequential, but taken together they had a strong force of grip upon his soul. 

Their progress was, by many accounts, amazing. Their martial arts teachers were all very proud of them and their astonishing progress (due, in large part to the Ape charms and spells to aid in memory, but still, there was a fair measure of their own diligence involved there as well). 

But 14 years olds, Tai Chi or not, actually fighting vamps equals dead kids. 

On one hand, Xander never wanted to face a vamp as long as he lived. On the other, well... there were people dying, and his friends were still not out of any sizable portion of that danger. 

Yes, they were staying indoors at night whenever possible. But that wasn't always possible, like when moms sent you out after sunset to take out the kitchen garbage or whatever. You couldn't just shoot back the response 'Sorry, I'll do it in the morning because I don't want the vampires to get me', because she'd dismiss that as a pitiful sounding excuse and make you go anyway, and there wasn't really a good way to break the fact to them that there WERE real vampires out there. 

That was only an example. Willow didn't have that problem as much as either Jesse or Xander, but Xander had the additional danger of having to escape his parents' drunken binges on little or no notice, so having to slip out at night was almost essential sometimes, even if he didn't have to go far. 

There were numerous ways and means they could be forced out into the night. And that was not even mentioning the possible troubles by having day-walking demons about. The point was, he didn't feel they could avoid contact with icky things forever. Somehow he just didn't think their luck would break that way. 

And part of him didn't want it to. 

"Well," Amy told him, still shaking her head dubiously at the mound of reading material that he was planning to chug down at his next opportunity. "I'm glad that I'm not going to be swallowing all of that." 

Xander chuckled, already rubbing his hands together in a mock evil way. "No, you do not understand. This is a perfect method for slacking our way to high grades. You can totally be relaxed at school if you've already mastered all of the material. Tests will be like teachers asking you something as well known to you as your dress size. Zero effort, total chill, all year long." 

A light bulb seemed to go off over Amy's head. 

The boy teen was near to producing mad scientist laughter. "And, from the better grades come better jobs later on, in theory. But far more attractive and more to the point, they also mean scholarships!! People paying us to be laid back college kids concerned with dates and parties instead of mutating into that dreaded life form known only as responsible adults! With our plan you can keep memorizing textbooks forever, and thus NEVER have to study for another test again!" 

He was rubbing his hands together now in a very good impression of a classic cartoon bad guy. "Our dastardly scheme turns what would be tons of work into total slacker heaven! Sun Tzu taught that the best victory is not to destroy your enemy, but to take him and his properties intact, and this way we can turn the entire educational system to our benefit! Instead of a daily torture, we'd be getting PAID to slack off, party and date!" 

Standing tall now, he raised a finger to begin nobly pontificating. "There is also the question of status. People give high regard to good students, and to be a good student all you need are high grades, which now for us are falling-down easy!" 

This was especially important to Xander. After all, a terrible student, child of drunken parents, and general layabout has 'crime' written all over him and would not receive the benefit of doubt from anyone. However, on the other had, an A student who had overcome tremendous home-life difficulties to enroll in honor courses and get on a future scholarship program can escape loads of suspicion - a key advantage that says as much for his longevity in the hero business as his ability to avoid being killed, according to Van Hellsing, that is, who ought to know. 

Being identified by the baddies was generally the start of any demon hunter's demise. And, like it or not, a defender of the innocent still had to pay his bills. 

This last was already starting to become important to him, as that whole 'Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters' thing was biting him. Xander had already come to realize just how financially dependent he was upon two very unreliable people, and even if they did stick around being less than ample providers he could hardly go asking for a raise in his allowance to afford a flamethrower and stakes. 

Heck, he was scraping by just to afford pencils by this point. Willow was being very kind to him, in giving him loans and things (although now she was drawing on kisses and snuggles as a form of collateral, and making vague references to when she got to 'collect' on those debts in full - brrr! Scary!), otherwise he would not be able to finish out a full summer course of those martial arts and other classes. 

But he could hardly keep leaning on her generosity forever! Nor had he managed to grow a tree big enough to sell yet. He was still working on that. 

Amy was already smacking her lips appreciatively. Leaning forward, she asked, "So, how soon can I get in on all of this?" 

---- 

The answer to Amy's question was, of course, 'right away.' 

They'd planned on having Willow do her session as well, however her parents actually came back and wanted to spend the evening with her, so not only did the adorable Jewess not want to waste this precious opportunity for all too rare parental bonding, but they didn't really have time to wait without running into conflicts with the Madison family summer vacation plans. 

So, Xander got drafted once again. 

"Xander! How good to see you. Have you had dinner yet?" Catherine Madison, Amy's mother, welcomed him into their home with a smile, having already set up the guest bedroom for him to spend the night. Xander was glad for the cheerful reception, as he was not overly accustomed to grownup, parental types having any kind of gladness at seeing him. 

Still, it was a feeling he could very much grow accustomed to, very quickly, if given any kind of opportunity. "Thanks Mrs. Madison, and yeah, but somehow it doesn't feel like it." 

"Call me Cathy, and let's see if we can't scrounge you up something in the fridge. We had ham steak tonight, and it will only take a minute to nuke you a potato. That metabolism spell you thought up was truly revolutionary. I wish I'd had something like it at your age." And it went on, as Catherine thanked him for helping her daughter get ready for cheer practice in the upcoming year while the conversation moved to the kitchen. 

He accepted this, mostly brushing it off, eager to get to the food and having no idea how important it was to her. 

What Xander had no way of knowing was Amy's mom had such a wonderful experience as a cheerleader during her high school years that she had begun to anticipate this for her daughter to such a high degree she was beginning to live vicariously through her. 

She had a boring job as a librarian, and it was nothing to compare to her glory years, so a certain amount of escapism was understandable. 

Catherine's postgraduate life was indeed so dull that her daughter's success had become very important to her. Having Amy duplicate her own triumphs was so important that her frustration over Amy's inability to lose the weight and join the cheerleading squad could easily convince the mom to try and take her daughter's place to 'help' her, by using her body and doing all the hard work herself. 

Amy's mom would never plan on taking over her daughter's life. It would only be later that the idea of keeping her body slowly crept in, followed by further moral decay of the evil inherent in using a possession spell on an unwilling target leading her to abandoning other principles in her quest for success. 

However, with Xander's group there helping Amy exercise and get in shape, that would not become a problem. And, as a bonus, the prospect of high grades for low effort was very appealing to both mother and daughter. In fact, an entirely different idea had begun to percolate in the mother's mind. 

Or, actually, more to the point, two of them. And she was anticipating one tonight. 

"Thanks, Mrs. M, that was great," Xander said, pushing away the now empty plate. That ham steak had indeed been truly excellent, even as leftovers. 

She was sitting across from him, leaning on the table and smiling. "I may have to get that spell out of you. I can hardly believe how fast my daughter is conditioning her body." 

With a shrug, the young man grabbed a piece of note paper from his pack and wrote the spell down before sliding it over to her. "No problem, Mrs. M, and thanks again for helping us do this." 

"My daughter's grades are important to me. And she can't be on the squad if they fall below a certain level, and I know how crushed she'd be by that." The woman noted conversationally as she picked up the piece of paper and read it. 

Xander shrugged again, looking at the note as she read it. "You have to cast it again every day. I don't have a longer version yet. But so far it is working for us." 

"So I can see," she teased him, before adding. "You're really growing up, Xander. I am impressed. A mother always hopes her daughter will fall for someone like you." 

"Sorry, already got a girlfriend." He chuckled, a bit off kilter as he was still amazed himself at that revelation. "Willow and I finally got together." 

"Well, I am glad for both of you then," she replied, schemes getting altered in her mind. 

After that, things went according to what had become fairly standard, as far as waiting most of the night asleep, waking to an alarm clock in the early hours, then going to the bedroom of the young lady in question to start the whole trance and memorize thingy. 

Her 'Great Mental Health' quote was one provided by her mother, and incidentally very similar to what a cross between Jesse's and Willow's would be: Don't be afraid to work hard to develop your abilities and reach your goals. 

Catherine had intended that primarily to support her in cheer practice, but felt that if it also helped her in her studies and witchcraft, that was a good bonus. 

Amy had then soaked down almost identical materials to what they'd used on Jesse. Although at the end there was a different scene yet to what each of the others had seen. Inside of herself there was a young girl trapped in a box, without much room to move. 

Xander's command had been, "Open the box and let her out." 

Just as he was about to finish up, Catherine walked in at the tail end of the session, with a robe thrown on over her nightgown, and asked, "Xander, could you leave us along for a moment? I have some family spells I want to share with my daughter in private." 

"Sure, Mrs. M. Just tell her went you want to wake her out of the trance." The young man smiled and left, somewhat eager to return to sleep himself. 

After the young boy left Catherine walked over to whisper to her daughter, because controlling mothers, especially the well-intended ones, do not simply give up that trait overnight, "Amy, I want you to listen to me as this is very important. You must fall in love with Xander, as he is the type of young man who will grow up to be a very wealthy man someday. If you have to share him, fine, but get him to fall in love with you as soon as you possibly can. Be good friends with Willow, as that should make everything easier. If you can get her to love you, she will want you to be happy, even if that means sharing her boyfriend with you. Do you understand me?" 

"Yes," spoke Amy dreamily, with a smile on her face as there had been a certain guilty attraction budding there already. 

"Good," the mother patted the side of her daughter's face happily, standing up to exit and smiling. "Do well at school, dear, and know that I love you. Now Goodnight, and don't forget any of what you've learned tonight, but don't speak to anyone about what I told you either. Now sleep." 

Smiling broadly now, certain that her daughter's future was set, Catherine left the small bedroom and went back to her own. Soon she was asleep, dreaming happy dreams about how well she'd done for Amy. 

---- 

The next morning, Jesse grinned as he saw his two best friends enter the building holding hands. Then he showed them that he had discovered a new form of game. The arcades in town were generally not places they hung around because on their allowances quarters were too expensive, and those games ate them far too greedily. 

One could spend one's entire comic book allowance there in half an hour or less and come away feeling unsatisfied, or buy comic books with it and have a few hours of enjoyment that one could revisit weeks or even months later. It was no contest, and so comic books won. 

However, Jesse had progressed sufficiently in theory to begin practice of the most basic transformative cantrip, which turned one very small object into something already closely related to it, for a very short duration. 

Sounds useless, doesn't it? 

Xander and Willow had felt so. However, Jesse had another idea. The spell was supposed to be practiced transforming a pebble into a ring or other small item of jewelry and wearing it, so when it fell off you'd be alerted and could transform it again. But that was pretty stale and boring if you didn't fancy jewelry. 

No, but Jesse had discovered another use lurking in the back of that fertile brain of his, and so his two best friends met him in front of the change-sucking machines otherwise known as games, where he was having a blast. 

It turned out that a penny was very similar to a quarter, similar enough that the very minor spell worked to turn one into the other, for a very short time of course, but the machines only cared for a second, as it was passing down the pipes. Once it was in the lock box at the heart of the thing it didn't care. 

So, Jesse was getting twenty five games for a quarter instead of one. So by the time his friends had joined him Jesse was already the champion of using that minor transformation cantrip, and was working on what he liked to call the 'coin of the realm' spell, for turning a one dollar bill into a twenty. Only for a few minutes or so, but that was long enough to make change from it. 

So the trio found themselves very unexpectedly sitting down to games at the arcade, able to afford drinks and hot dogs and the whole deal. 

Jesse grinned as he saw his two friends sit down right next to each other, always in contact yet neither having to really think on that. They'd been together a very short time and yet already both were undergoing changes that young couples did while they were in love, snatching kisses in public and neither even having to think about that. 

Amy entered not a long while later and the day began. 

The 4th of July had come and gone, and Jesse had gotten together a large amount of leftover fireworks and was wondering how to use them to put down vamps. 

The Roman Candle was his best bet so far, but those sparklers looked very promising, too, if only he could figure out how to use them. 

However, the newly minted couple of Xander and Willow found they had a problem that didn't go stalking and biting in the night. 

The Scoobies had each read and memorized a book on how to read people's emotions by their posture and body language, for helping to interpret their aura images. They were still working that out, as having read the material did not mean they had fully internalized it or knew how to incorporate it as yet, and they would be some time mastering that. 

However, some things were so obvious they could not be missed, and so it was that the group learned that Amy had begun crushing on Xander and his new hotness factor, rather badly. 

She tried hard to hide it, and to suppress it so she could be a good friend and not intrude on their happiness, but neither were working for the girl, and it shortly began hurting them all to see her suffer like that. If she weren't so obviously trying so hard not to reveal it or feel it, they might've felt a great deal less charitable, but as it was she was trying so desperately to be their perfect friend that their hearts were melting just a little. 

Still, the conflict wasn't doing anyone any good, and they felt a bit miserable over how relieved they felt as she and her mother left that evening to go see aunts and cousins in Florida for a few days. 

---- 

That night, Xander was prepared for his second time through the hypnotism thingy to be a non-event. Most of the tricky stuff like opening the brow chakra would not have to be repeated, all he was doing was just going to be memorizing a whole bunch of books. 

A scary pile of books, in fact, one that even intimidated Willow slightly. 

It included not only all of the aforementioned books, including everything his high school had to offer, but the newly completed Xander-Dex as well as a book containing the complete works of Shakespeare. 

"Why this one?" Willow asked, as she regarded the thick tome with some amount of disbelief at her oldest friend's ambition. 

"Ah!" Xander grinned excitedly. "There is this natural tendency among people to mistake you for educated if you can quote Shakespeare." 

"Okay," she said disbelieving that he truly intended to go through with this. 

End of Chapter Seven 

Author's Note:   
While I am very grateful to all of my reviewers for their kindness and support, a special thanks must go to dogbertcarroll for his excellent (and timely) suggestion for how to handle Amy's mother. 


	8. Chapter 8

The Knights of Scooby   
Chapter Eight 

by Lionheart 

---- 

Feedback is the coin of the realm. 

---- 

Xander's second session had indeed overloaded him. It would be two days before he woke, and even then he'd do it with a splitting headache and scrambled thoughts, wishing fervently that he'd taken in less than half of that material, at most. His thinking would be sluggish for weeks afterwards, and his absorption of that material actually slower than if he'd taken it all at a more reasonable pace, as most of his 'mental muscles' would be busy just coping with the strain instead of assimilating the data. 

It was a good lesson to learn. Painful, but one not likely for him to forget. However, important events would proceed without him in that period of time. 

Tony Harris came home from work to find a home that was already returning somewhat to its previous state of squalor. Dirty dishes were stacked up in the kitchen and objects were discarded around the living room floor. No vomit or urine, spilled bottles or dropped food containers stained the new carpets as yet, but it was only a matter of time, say a week at most, as Jessica cared as little about proper housekeeping as he did. 

However, the imminent befouling of their new finery did nothing to impact on his good mood, for there, sitting on a grand piano bought in his wife's name (actually, they had two of them), was a bank statement, including one very important canceled check returned for him to file away, showing that the insurance company had cashed the payment he had made to them, and all of the bookkeeping to get the Harrises coverage was now complete. It was now fully activated, and they had the proof in their hands. 

Everything was ready. 

Tony joined his wife in getting plastered in what he felt was a very private celebration, although his wife happened to have the same reason and was celebrating right there beside him, each thinking the other ignorant. 

How ironic that neither knew the other shared their same plans. 

The couple boozed and watched TV until night fell, both sensing a great triumph over the other. When at last the curtains of evening were drawn over the town Tony, as casually as he could muster, turned to Jessica and invited her to go eat out with him. 

She agreed, somewhat surprised at how easy this was going for her. She'd had plans of her own to bail on fixing dinner, refusing their usual takeout, and insisting that he took her out to dine. 

Now this was all going so smoothly. 

Tony then went upstairs to try and take his son along with them; after all, the boy was covered too, and Tony could really use the extra dough. But nothing he did could rouse him, so leaving him with a big, meaty smack to the side of the face, and a private, inward rant about he'd get the same as his mother, just later, the drunken dad went downstairs and, joining up with his wife, the couple went out for a night on the town together. 

They went first to a restaurant, a little upscale for them and an ok place. It helped to pass the time as evening turned into the full dark of night. Then the couple could hardly wait to go inviting each other out for a moonlit walk, each pretending that it was to romance the other. 

The Harrises drove to a bad part of town, each one hoping the other didn't notice. Then they parked, and went out as if for a stroll. 

They hadn't gotten twenty paces from the car before they were accosted. Tony Harris shoved his wife forward, right into the arms of a vamp. Then he reached into his pocket, grinning in drunken triumph... only to find that the cross he had secretly put there earlier was not there anymore, as vampires closed in from all around. 

Jessica's strugglings to pick that cross out of her own pocket were futile as the vampire had already pinned her arms. Tony lunged for the cross in her pocket, getting it out only for the woman to seize it herself, and the couple fought over it, each struggling for possession until it broke. 

The vampires laughed. 

Both of the Harris' screams cut off rather abruptly after that. 

---- 

Sunnydale PD did a daily early morning (but not too early) drive by looking for bodies. Mr. and Mrs. Harris were just two entries on that list one morning as the cops did a sweep that really ought to be frightening in its efficiency and deeply jaded casualness toward the appalling yet routine numbers of dead. 

It would have astonished anyone outside of town who knew about it. But the covers were deeply enough in place they had no fear of that. 

The couple's mauled bodies were identified, collected, and the improbably swift processing of each death began with all of the appropriate people notified and the corpses getting sent off to the Sunnydale Funeral Home. 

Two police officers who were long used to this sort of thing went to the Harris home to inform the boy of the deaths of his parents. They found the door open and junk strewn about inside, and they entered to find the boy unconscious on his bed with a big purple bruise on the side of his face. 

He was moved to the hospital by ambulance for investigation while the legal process of terminating the existence of his parents went on unmolested. The insurance got detected, and the company notified to pay up on two claims. A court found Xander's Uncle Rory to be the closest related responsible adult and gave him custody of the boy, who in turn was automatically made head of the trust in which his parents had placed all of their former possessions, including the house, the car, the pianos and all of their new toys. 

The car was, unfortunately, a loss, stolen by the 'gangs on PCP', but there was a hefty insurance package covering that, too. While those debts the couple had accumulated acquiring all of this stuff were theirs alone, and so died with them, leaving the young boy a very wealthy man. 

After all, the curse that had been left on the elder pair of Harrises by Mr. Mage Dude was that they should remove their capacity to harm their son (and, lacking the mental fortitude to improve their dispositions to where they did him no harm, that defaulted down to removing themselves), and do so in such a way as to restore to him equal value for as much of the damage they'd done to his life as possible. 

Considering that each of his parents had just activated a fifteen million dollar life insurance policy apiece, leaving the young man a cool thirty million dollars from that act alone, plus the house, car insurance payout, and all of the toys purchased on debts that no longer followed them, it came very close indeed to restoring to him equal value - seeing as how they'd almost completely destroyed his life and hopes for a decent future, but now he had it made. 

It wasn't truly the same, as a good set of parents would have taught him how to succeed in life without such a huge lump of cash, and if he'd followed their example he could still waste it all and ruin his fortune, but Mr. Mage Dude had already covered that aspect, freeing the young man from walking down their path by showing him he had the willpower to strike out on his own Way. 

Vengeance in that was satisfied. 

Admittedly, this was not Justice, Mercy or even Balance we were talking about. It was a Vengeance Curse, and it had done its job. Perhaps an ugly job from some perspectives, but that's what Vengeance did. It was rarely pretty, and didn't concern itself with niceties. 

One of those rules Throckmorton had penned down was "Always be aware of whatever Force you are invoking, because they function in different ways." 

No one specialized in Kindness Curses. If they got upset enough to want to curse you, they generally wanted you to suffer, and Vengeance was good at that; very good indeed, as it was its specialty. Vengeance was not concerned with caring about a target's feelings... or, actually, it was. It wanted to hurt them to the greatest degree conveniently possible. 

And, in that, it had done its job famously in this case. 

But don't ever invoke Vengeance trying to make a subject happy. It doesn't work well. That's not it's job. You might as well ask Mercy to torture them. 

As the legal process spend toward closure, finishing off the details that shut down the legal existences of Anthony and Jessica Harris, Xander woke in a hospital bed, a worried Willow looking down on him in tearful relief. 

Willow wrapped her arms around him, pressing her body against his as hard as she could, and pulled her head down to his. This time she gave him the most passionate kiss she could, pouring all the feelings she had been holding inside for so long into one unequivocal statement. Finally, she ended it and looked once more into his eyes, her own eyes dancing with happiness. Her heart gave a lurch when she saw the look of sheer joy that erupted on his face, and a single word formed silently on his lips. "Wow!" 

Moments afterward, very solemn-faced adult came in later to tell him all of the ugly news, including that he was now a very wealthy orphan. 

His uncle came in to collect him and check him out of the hospital a little later, a concerned Willow bobbing along after as they went to his pickup to drive home. 

---- 

Xander's second session lead to something of a crash and depression. He felt nothing particular about the loss of his parents, only a deep void where the affection ought to have been, and that void disturbed him. 

It wasn't right. 

He knew that they had never wanted his love, or gave any effort to gain it. If anything, his mother and father had done the opposite, ignoring him when they didn't do worse. They had become, over time, a pair of strangers who had shared the same house with him. 

But still, they were familiar strangers, a known threat, comfortable in an odd and irritating way, and that awful emptiness that came from knowing they were gone wouldn't go away, and he wished he knew how he felt about the whole matter. 

Knowing they were gone was like moving to a different part of the same country in some ways. Everything was different while remaining the same, and he couldn't explain it any better than that (not that he really had the mental capacity free to try, as his mind was as crystal clear as swamp mud after overloading himself on that hypnotism session, and he'd only just begun dealing with that). 

It was unfortunate for the young man that two such experiences, each one requiring massive mental down-time to deal with, fell on top of each other like that. However, his friends did pull him through, helping him to classes so that he could go through the motions and acquire those abilities, even if he did have all of the stunning wit of a zombie while doing them. 

It was a couple of days before Xander could get back to his self appointed job at the mortuary, as among other reasons he didn't want to risk running into his parents' bodies there. 

Cold, nude bodies of total strangers was one thing, an icky and disgusting thing but one that he had learned how to deal with because he viewed it as necessary. The same deal starring his parents was another thing entirely, and no kid wants to go there. 

The intervening time he spent with his friends, gradually getting back into all of their classes and trying to sort out the tangled mess that had become his mind. As if the crushing loads from not-quite grief and massively over-using the hypnotic memorization thing weren't enough, the loss of his parents did tend to underscore that he and his friends didn't really do anything to reduce the vampire threat of their home town. 

So there was a whole nuther angle to consider there if he wanted to be keeping up with his self imposed responsibilities: Defense alone was not enough, if they wanted to solve this, they had to attack. 

Xander considered his morning errands to the mortuary to be sort of banking the fire, so to speak - All that it did was slow down the spread of vampiric fiends. It didn't destroy any that were already active, and it was the active ones that were creating the bodies that he was trying to stop from rising as more of the horrid creatures. 

Losing his parents, and having already had to stake corpses of kids nearly his age, some of whom he recognized from classes, he'd had about as much as he could take without lashing back to try and stop some of the active ones. 

Even if he wasn't close to his parents, becoming an orphan could be viewed as the straw that broke the camel's back and convinced him that they had to do something! 

The murders had to stop, or at least slow down! And, being honest with himself, the only way that was about to happen was if he destroyed more vampires: The adult, already active kind that could so easily destroy him. 

That meant another trap or raid... something to reduce their numbers. But, with his mind as muddy as it was, he wasn't getting any good ideas. 

He also knew that doing anything of the sort was hugely dangerous, risking all sorts of attention and counterstrikes he really didn't feel they were up to facing just yet. However, as those bodies just kept rolling in he didn't see how he could delay much longer. He could hardly stand it. 

Although he was unlikely to admit it to himself, Xander felt he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He knew, from a few passing mentions in Van Hellsing's guide, of the supposed existence of Watchers and Slayers, and what he wouldn't give to have a set of those in his life right now didn't bear mentioning. 

However, he had to face that there was no Watcher, no Slayer in his life right then, and as far as he knew there was no one else dealing with all of this - It was just him. Not only that, but the safety of his friends rested solely on his shoulders as far as he could see. 

Anything they'd done to defend themselves, they've done following his lead. He was the one with the responsibility and powers. As far as he was concerned, that made its HIS job! 

Xander, feeling overwhelmed by his responsibilities, found himself wishing over and over again that he had someone to ask questions of, a tutor or mentor or guide to help him out, resolve his difficulties and just teach him what he ought to do. 

That wasn't too much to ask, was it? 

If only that mage had hung around, Xander felt a perverse sort of trust for the man who did a fly-by-night job of introducing him to his task. But he hadn't, and there wasn't anything Xander could do about that. 

Too bad his parents were dead, but even before they'd been useless, worse than useless, actually. And the other adults in his life were just as bad for various reasons. Any member of his family was out, as they'd assume that his parents had gotten him a drug habit with associated hallucinations. Ask his teachers? Yeah, like that would go over well. For some reason he doubted fighting off vampires was anywhere in the coursework. 

If it was, he wouldn't have such a big job to do alone! 

Not having a father figure or responsible adult in his life had never seemed so hopeless before now. But, not deterred by the seeming impossibility of the task, his subconscious spat up one of the spells in the handbook of Light magic that he might try, one to call on an ancestor spirit for advice. 

That put him to pause in his tracks. His family couldn't always have been useless, right? I mean, if they'd always been this bad they'd have died out long ago, right? 

So, maybe, way back in the long forgotten days there had been a Harris who was worth something? The spell promised that no ancestor who was unwilling to help could be called, and any who responded should be disposed favorably to the one calling, as well as feel able to advise on the problem. That was actually one of the cautions about this spell in the book, that if no relative wished to be disturbed, or felt able to advise on the current issue, the spell would simply fail to call anyone. 

That made it safe. I mean, what did he have to lose? Hopefully, somewhere back in history there had been a wise old guy, or a footsoldier in someone's army, who had something to say - at least something to ease his mind! 

He couldn't be the first Harris in all of history to know about demons, right? Surely there had to be a priest, or a crusader, or... somebody! And even if not (which, contemplating his luck, he suspected there wasn't), even just a few kinds words from someone older could ease his mind somewhat. 

And you didn't get much older than a bunch of dead guys, right? 

Head aching from way too much unabsorbed information, heart aching from a loneliness he hadn't even known he'd felt, the boy resolved that he needed some help beyond was he was already getting from Willow and Jesse, and made a resolve to give the spell a try. 

Who knew? Maybe his parents would even drop by to say they loved him? Stranger things had happened, right? 

Going back to his home (where Rory had said he could stay if he wanted to, and Xander couldn't see any reason to move away from Willow), the young man went up to his room to try the spell, striking his bed almost immediately as his overburdened mind sank gratefully into the required trance. 

And he learned what he had never supposed. 

As he sank into the trance, Xander saw a mist, out of which stepped a figure dressed all in black from head to toe. 

"Welcome to my Hacienda," said the tall man stepping out of the mystical shadows conjured up in his mind as they reformed into a nearly desert scene, completed with a large, sprawling adobe house in the old Spanish style. 

"Who are you?" the young man stumbled. 

The tall man smiled, a charming, winning, one even might say loving smile, but it was also the smile of a man who knew what he was doing and was confident of success. 

"I am Don Diego de la Vega. But you may have heard of me as Zorro." 

End of Chapter Eight 

Author's Notes:   
I do prefer to put a little more length into each of these, but I couldn't think of a better place to end a chapter. And just so you know, this ending scene has been in the plans since the beginning. 

Review please. 


	9. Chapter 9

The Knights of Scooby   
Chapter Nine 

by Lionheart 

---- 

Feedback is the coin of the realm. 

---- 

Mind-scapes can be an interesting thing. For one, they are fully subjective, weeks, months or even years may pass in mental space for each moment of real time. 

This was fortunate in Xander's case, as he had much to learn. 

Due to a cosmic coincidence, Xander's ancestry stretched back in California far longer than anyone supposed, and according to the man himself, Xander was a direct male-line descendant of Zorro, although intervening generations had done much to obscure his Spanish origins. 

The one thing they had not dimmed in the slightest, at least in Xander's case, was the pure, undefiled reaction to true evil - he would resist it to his last breath, and beyond if required. 

The dead hero was quite pleased to see that trait of his resurging. Nor was he the only spirit so delighted by the appearance of a True Hero, even a neophyte one. 

One thing about the dead is they are pretty well informed about who is killing them. No repressing there! Death was the ultimate Wake Up call. Enough lives had been destroyed in Sunnydale that the ghosts of those who had passed on had no doubts at all about who was behind it, having traced back who and what was responsible. They even had names and addresses of Mayor Wilkins' entire organization, plus any independents he tolerated, and they were willing to share it all with someone who was willing to avenge them. 

No, willing did not cover it. They were positively EAGER! 

So it was that Xander learned far more than he had ever supposed about his mayor and the night life of Sunnydale. In fact, he knew more than Wilkins and his cronies did about the particulars. 

But first, before he could afford to do anything about that, his ancestor had some things to teach him. 

It turned out Mayor Wilkins was far from the first corrupt magician to gain an office and use demons or undead to oppress his people. There were other, much more famous ones, even ones right there in California. 

Apparently, the Spanish Governor of California had been one such, once upon a time. He was far less famous, however, than the hero who had faced him. A man known to history as Don Diego, but otherwise remembered in legend and folklore as the amazing masked bandit Zorro. 

Most renditions of that story did not have him dealing out destruction to the undead and demons a corrupt and greedy Spanish Governor used to terrorize his peasants into obedience, but who would have believed such a tale anyway? So, as it passed from mouth to mouth, it became soldiers instead of demons, corrupt tax men stealing life in the form of desperately needed coins rather than vampires who took it direct from veins. 

But the Hellmouth was hardly a new invention, and it was those Spaniards who had named it Boca del Infierno. They were aware of it, and the corrupt mayor of Sunnydale was not the first greedy and power-hungry man to make use of it for personal advantage. Or the first to be fought or resisted on it. 

So Zorro was not only a hero who knew a great deal about fighting, he had direct experience facing exactly those same types of foes as Xander did. 

The youth's gratitude on meeting this ancestor could not be described in words, as the teen had been very nearly broken by his burdens at the time he'd made his call for help, and his many-times-great grandfather was the perfect man to answer the call. 

And it wasn't just that he was a supremely practical fighter of evil, but that he had the capacity to give his many-times-removed grandson the one thing he truly lacked that no other could give him. 

A loving family. 

Don Diego and his wife, Esperanza, welcomed Xander into their home, and did what no one could outside of the fluid realms of dreams - they shrank him back to a kid and raised him all over again. And the couple had experience doing it right, as there were quite a few legends of the 'Son of Zorro' being as much of a man and hero as his father had been. 

Xander got to spend fourteen subjective years being a child of the de la Vega family, growing up all over again with mists to shroud his mind so he could not recall his previous childhood while they did so, and thus they could do it right this time. 

It would not erase his former childhood, nor could they stop him from having those memories after he had woken up. However, being the child of the de la Vegas in what was at least a subjective reality did give him another road map as for how a family ought to function. 

It was all very well and good for Xander to resolve not to be like Jessica and Tony. But neither his resolve, nor Mr. Mage Dude's command, gave him any other pattern to follow. 

Most people just go through life following the patterns they know. 

Forging new territory was always hard, and particularly so when there was another option, even a bad one, waiting nearby. It could be so easy to slip and fall back into those known behavior patterns rather than stick to the effort required to make new ones. 

And, in fact, that very equation of effort versus ease had doomed many good hearted and well meaning youths of awful parents before this. By no means all, but many. 

However, by having memories of a lifetime raised by good parents, even if only in a dream (albeit a full sensory one with real person interactions), Xander now had options he did not have before. He UNDERSTOOD how good families were to operate! And thus, rather than having to forge some habits out of scrap ideas, he merely had to choose between ones already known. 

Once put on that footing it was no contest. Obviously, he preferred those patterns taught to him by Zorro and his wife and children, as they knew how to be productive and happy and his own original parents hadn't. 

So that was a good thing. 

This did not erase his previous childhood. It was merely a very intense dream, one where he, for a time, could not recall his original upbringing (all of which would return before he woke), and hung around interacting with the ghosts of his ancestors who took time out of their afterlives to teach him things. 

As they did so they quite deliberately loaded his mind with all of the tools and habits necessary for it to treat its own wounds, so the memories and scars of abuse and neglect could fade away, leaving only the good stuff, a residue making the hard core of an iron strong young man, further sharpened by his new experiences with his ancient ancestors. 

Dreamtime was not realtime, and it was infinitely more flexible. So there also came a number of skills not purely related to his mental health from having spent a subjective decade or two on the de la Vega Hacienda. 

Everything that a cowboy is supposed to know, they taught, including how to ride (and not just ride, but ride hard, ride fast, ride long and do tricks while performing all of the above), rope, lasso, use a whip or a branding iron, run a ranch and also manage a prosperous farm or estate, build with adobe, cut wood, shoe horses, saw timber, mend fences, shingle, and in all other ways survive on a plot of land a few thousand miles from civilization where if you couldn't do a chore it didn't get done. 

In the modern world one economic law rules above all: That if you can't buy it, you can't have it. However, back in those ancient days of the untamed wilds another law once stood: That if you can't MAKE it, you don't have it. 

That applied to food and clothes and just about everything else. 

So the people of the day made practically everything themselves. It was a day of craftsmen and practical engineers, where men worked first to create tools, then used them to construct farms, mines, towns and eventually cities, including every little detail along the way, from printing presses with movable type to washbasins and all of the daily necessities. 

It was freedom of a sort that few modern people could imagine. Yes, the work was hard, but you owed nothing to anyone. And, aside from your land or health, there was nothing you could lose that you could not replace by your own labors. You were independent of just about everyone else. 

And if they saw something in a shop window but couldn't afford it, most of the time those hardy people could go home and make their own. 

There were exceptions to this, of course, but not as many as you'd think. 

The rich, of course, didn't bother so much with doing things on their own, and as prosperity and civilization spread so did specializations, so it became easy not to know how to do everything you needed to stay alive because more and more it became possible to rent out your services at one specialty and use that money to buy the labors of other specialists in turn. 

However, in 18th century California that was nearly impossible, as it was nearly a wasteland in most places and the population too low for specialists to have any effect on the necessity of taking care of yourself. 

So Xander stood there helping and learning while the ghosts of his many-times-great grandfather's workers did everything you can imagine from blacksmithy on down to making cheeses. They weren't the best cheeses in the world, but you could make a taco out of them. 

In the dream to which he had been drawn, Xander effectively lived the life of a young boy being raised on the Hacienda. Nor was Zorro a proud noble who disdained to use or learn the skills of those peasants who were beneath him. If there was wood to be carved or bricks to be formed, he was there at least knowing how to do it so that he could supervise properly, which often meant being better than the men doing the actual labor. 

Carpentry, bricklaying, brickMAKING, stonecutting and carving, blacksmithy and leatherworking, all of this was there as an integral part of life on the Hacienda, and in more cases than not Zorro did his own work, as it was difficult to hide your secret rooms or passageways, fittings for a distinctive saddle on a very well known horse, and so on otherwise. 

Similarly, making repairs on a very famous sword, or crafting a replacement those few times it became necessary. To keep a secret in a small community where everyone knows everyone else, you had to do all of the hidden work in private, else everyone would instantly be able to see through your disguise. 

It would not be, "Who is that masked man?" but instead rather, "Oh, I see Don Diego is out riding in that mask I made for him." 

Xander, quite naturally did all of this with him, learning by the side of his very skilled ancestor (this whole thing WAS set up for his benefit after all - as the ranch and farm of the de la Vegas no longer existed and the building of walls or performing of chores no longer needed to happen, they and other ghosts who were helping had all just arranged this for their descendant's education). 

And boy was it an education! 

There was, on the most obvious level, the basic essentials of getting by and making your own living beholden to no other man. How to feed, clothe and build shelter for yourself, even achieving a fair degree of comfort using nothing that you couldn't create with your own two hands or tools that you made with those two hands. 

And then there were the next stage beyond, where they taught him how to eat and dress and act properly with what was then high society on the wild frontier, lessons that were surprisingly applicable just about anywhere as the basics had stayed unchanged for quite some time. 

The third level yet was the fun, heroic stuff, where his famous grandsire passed on those skills that made him Zorro. 

Obviously, the ones most practical to Xander's dangerous situation centered around how to fight effectively, which the Spaniard knew well. The fighting arts had been just as thoroughly studied in Europe as in the Orient. Boxing, fencing, wresting... the ancestors of these modern sports had been fighting arts surprisingly far more deadly than their rather tame descendants. 

The most extreme example was in Fencing, where the modern sport to bear that name bore practically no resemblance at all to the once deadly art of swordsmanship, save they were called by the same word. To fence, in the ancient term, was every bit as deadly as those duels fought by samurai who crossed swords in the East and died by thousands. 

The main difference lay that in the East, masters sought students to carry on their schools as a legacy, while in the West the most skilled masters of those deadly arts rarely taught them to anyone, and did not record their arts for fear of facing their own pupils in battle some day, wanting to retain whatever advantages they had discovered against possible rivals. 

It was a violent age when warriors could expect to walk out the door at any moment and enter combat. These men were not so much concerned with following along with one style or instructor. Rather, they were concerned with pragmatic methods of practical fighting, in other words, with acquiring the personal skills to simply protect themselves and defeat enemies. 

However, in quality, those masters in Europe could walk as equals with their counterparts in the East, and Zorro was one such master, trained by the best available at the height of such dueling and his skills further refined by his natural genius and grown only more deadly through his great experience. 

But there came a time not long after when duels and challenges were on the decline and it became no longer acceptable for so many students to die or be injured learning and practicing those extremely deadly fighting styles. So, those who wished for those legacies to live on chose to convert them to ever less deadly forms, safer to learn and to practice, until they had been wholly converted from deadly fighting arts to recreational sports, safe for anyone, where a minor injury was a small tragedy. 

However, in a true life or death struggle, there are no rules, and those much diluted practices could no longer ensure any real degree of safety, as their parent arts once had. 

The practice of historical fencing or real swordsmanship was not about accommodating participants, building self-esteem, or feeling good; it was about functioning effectively as a fighter in a combat situation willing to take any advantage offered, with the whole body considered a legitimate target. That kind of combat training could not be made accessible for everyone without eliminating the very struggle for dominance that it embodied. 

And Zorro's mastery of it had been nearly supreme for his place and time. 

Upon being summoned, he began teaching the boy how to take on the job of his successor, all in a single night. Of course, there was no guarantee that his descendant would ever fully master those arts like his famous ancestor had. Training, no matter the source, was still only training. It was up to the pupil to take what was being taught and make it his own, to convert it from drills and theory into practical application adaptable to any situation. 

However, nothing ever learned like a motivated student. 

Zorro was, as Xander knew from the comic books, a major inspiration for the character Batman. And there was a good reason for that, as the infamous bandit's descendant discovered. He was an extremely agile athlete and acrobat, using his bullwhip as a gymnastic accouterment to swing through gaps between the city's roofs. He was very capable of landing from great heights and taking a fall, and, although an expert swordsman, had more than once demonstrated his more than able prowess in unarmed combat, even against as many as twenty armed opponents. 

Early on, he had also used a pistol. 

His calculating and precise dexterity had enabled him to use his two main weapons, his sword and bullwhip, as extensions of his very sleight hand. He never relied on brute strength, more his fox-like sly mind and well-practiced technique to outmatch opponent after opponent. 

Usually he used psychological mockery to make his opponents too angry to be coordinated in combat. But he was very adaptable to any circumstance. He had used his cape as a blind, a trip-mat, and (most effectively) a disarming tool. Zorro's boots and hat were also weighted, which he had thrown, frisbee-like, as an efficiently substantial taunt to his enemies. He also had a medium-sized dagger tucked in his left boot for emergencies. 

His horse, Tornado, had well lived up to his name, outrunning entire armies, overtaking enemies miles away, even catching up to a full speeding train so that Zorro could save his wife and son. As an inspiration to the crowds that love Zorro dearly, he would often rear up in the distance, with the sun behind him, and raising his sword to symbolize victory to the people of his beloved country. 

It was a cliche, but things only become cliches when they were so effective the first time that they got endlessly repeated. 

Just like the Spanish hero who used rapier, fists, whip and pistol to fight evil had spawned distorted reflections in the form of a fist-fighting, line-swinging Batman, and a pistol armed archeologist by the name of Indiana Jones who copied his whip work over almost every point. 

The changes wrought by this training on Xander were both very huge, and so small as to be inconsequential. Truly, as the Heir of Zorro the fourteen year old boy was a completely different man. But, at the heart and core of him, he was very much the same as he'd always been. 

The insecurity was gone, but you'd never be able to tell if he didn't want you to, seeing as how he'd been taught by an expert to play a dandy or a fop in order to divert suspicion away from him. The jury was still out on whether he'd want to, though, as other people read Zorro or Batman comics these days, too. Who knew? The fops might be the ones under the microscope with suspicious types hanging around them here. 

The smart-aleckiness was actually refined to a razor sharp wit, deadly in certain society circles that no longer existed. 

Time would tell what he'd become, but already he'd broken the mold that Fate had once assigned him. 

Right before waking up after a very long and event-filled night of the most intense, time distorted dreams, Don Diego gave his many times removed son a last walk through the by now intimately familiar Spanish manor house, and gave him some pep talks and final advice. 

The last words of this great hero to his not so far removed descendant were enough to resound in Xander's mind long afterwards. "There are many things that cannot be taught, but must be learned all the same. You are fortunate, my little fox, in that you have already come to realize some of them. In time, you will learn more. Go now. Do not look back or pine with wishes to return to us. Life is short, and even if you live hundreds of years we will still be here when you cross into the afterlife to join us. Come back with honor, my son." 

Xander startled as he awoke to find Willow draped all over him, crying. 

---- 

Thankfully, the hospital had not been called, but it was a near thing. 

Xander had been asleep for over twelve hours, long enough for his friends to get suspicious and for Willow to go looking for him, finding him once again in his room passed out, she had nearly dialed the hospital's emergency number. 

The youth was glad that she hadn't as explanations were already awkward enough. Once they got together with the rest of the group they were all day recounting events and setting things straight. 

Xander was rambling as they all left a fast food joint together, after having conveyed most of the pertinent details of his story already. "Did you know Zorro is Spanish for fox? Why can't they teach practical stuff like that in school? Most of our books are on how to ask directions, and you'd be hard-pressed to find something more useless, since you'd never understand the answers you got anyway." 

Willow giggled despite the light blush that had prevailed upon her fair complexion all day as the New And Improved Xander had, quite unconsciously, been treating her with all of the gentle courtesy that proper Victorian era men gave to their ladies. 

The part of her that wanted to raise a standard for feminism was ruthlessly squashed down by the much larger part that wanted Xander to treat her like this forever. 

Yes, sad but true, she'd rather be pampered than liberated. Romance does often have that effect upon impressionable young girls like her. 

Amused at having watching this interaction all day, Jesse proudly inflated his chest and declared, "Well, other than a sudden appreciation for Mexican food that is downright spooky. I'd have to say that he looks like our Xan, he acts much like our own Xand-man, and since nobody in this hemisphere dresses like him, I'm tempted to say this is the genuine article." 

Amy giggled at Jesse's dissertation. 

"Accept no substitutes." Xander agreed with his friend, then shrugged. "On the plus side, I know what Boca del Infierno means. This place is the literal mouth of hell, a dimensional weak point on which icky grossness feeds and that attracts bad guys of every kind." 

Now Amy giggled into her hand, looking up to challenge Xander with shining eyes. "And we know just the masked man to do something about it!" 

End of Chapter Nine 

---- 

Author's Notes:   
Not much more than a training collage, but those have to be gone through from time to time as you level up a character. I had a hard time doing this one, though. 

Oh, well. Hopefully more fun stuff awaits us beyond. 

On what has already gone before: This particular Xander was feeling very alone, facing the whole Hellmouthy threat with no other viable candidates for taking it on. That's far more pressure than he ever had to take in the series, when he was donut guy to real heroes and any effort on his part was optional, with him getting told to leave it to the experts, at that. 

So that burden, as much as those books in his head, was causing him to be far more serious. I defy anyone to stay goofy when you and all you love are on the line, there is no hope or relief in sight - and you just might be the only thing stopping it all from sliding off into ruin. 

Go ahead. I dare you. 

Fortunately for all of us, pressure can make diamonds. Willow can also see and sense the weight on him and, like any good woman, is trying to take her share of it off of him, being supportive and all of that, doing what she can to ease his burden that he bears on her behalf. 

Jesse, as the one without powers or responsibilities, feels privileged to stay a goofball, to a large extent taking over Xander's original position of team clown, keeping others from getting too serious over simple matters of life and death, and making sure they still enjoy life by focusing on the sunny side, the trivial and the funny. 

But changes are in the works for them as well. 


	10. Chapter 10

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Ten

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Feedback is the coin of the realm.

I O I O I

Chaos, Balance, and Order were not interested in human welfare, they were only interested in Chaos, Balance and Order respectively. Balance was not about good triumphing over evil. Balance was about the status quo.

Balance was not, could NEVER be, one side of the scale or the other. It was the scale itself. And whenever the scale itself becomes interested in keeping the two sides equal... well, once the scale becomes involved it ceases being an impartial judge and stops being what it was good for - measuring.

Balance was not Justice. It wasn't it's job to make sure that both sides were playing fair. Nor was it Destiny, dealing out what was appropriate to each side. No, Balance was only a yardstick, a measuring tool to say what existed. It had no part in deciding what to do with that information.

If Balance became involved directly it became a crooked judge, like a referee at a sporting event who was determined to make sure that both sides came out with the same score, no matter the differences in skill or how well they played. The game didn't work if the teeter-totter itself started to decide to keep both sides level with each other. That was never its job, and it defeated its own purpose whenever it tried to do so.

In short, once Balance became a player determined to affect the outcome, it could no longer do what Balance was good for. It had fallen from it's purer state and could no longer claim any right to be involved at all.

However, good luck telling a crooked judge to leave the game. That would be like asking Mayor Wilkins nicely to step down from government and all of his plans. He just wasn't going to do it; not on his own, not voluntarily.

At that point it defaults to a higher power to kick them out, and luckily Good and Evil were both far more powerful than either Chaos, Balance or Order.

Those two forces played an epic game using legendary pieces. But Evil was starting out with an initial advantage in this case. Corruption was their gig, their stock in trade. Anything corrupt was Evil's servant, so they already started out in control of the forces of so-called Balance, and had been using it for some time to get the side of Light to steadily accept greater and greater levels of Evil in their world, doing nothing to oppose it as it expanded because Balance said more Evil was needed in order to retain equilibrium.

Because that was how Evil did things. It lied.

Lots of people were truly bought into the concept that Balance was good, the only true good, and more good than Good.

They were wrong, most desperately wrong.

In this case, having broken its original purpose for being, Balance had become a servant of Evil. And its servants danced to its tune, so corrupted Balance, serving Evil, did its job for it and passed on those lies promoting Evil.

Fortunately Good had its toe in the door in one or more places as well.

I O I O I

A man known to a small few only by the later-applied nickname of Mr. Mage Dude (something that would've affronted his dignity if he'd heard of it) had arrived in Boston on a related trip, stopping by some elders of the Rosenberg clan to report in person upon the results of his recent inspection done of the most neglectful situation Ira and Sheila Rosenberg kept their daughter in.

It had only been a few weeks. And, having seen to his own affairs just barely enough to squeeze free this time for a short hop to his clan's allies, he was on his way to the point of meeting when he was jostled by a young girl who also, he happened to notice, be a pickpocket.

Catching the girl's arm and freezing her with a spell, the mage reclaimed his wallet and took a moment as he did so to read out of her aura the basics of her story.

Hmm, mother was an alcoholic when she was alive, recently started bouncing through this American foster care system, a potential Slayer (though this, in itself, was unremarkable, as there were thousands of them and most never got activated - the sad and regrettable part being that those who did got guaranteed an early grave, with the least fortunate ones not even having the meager comfort of staying in it).

So the little brown-haired girl told a tale of a tragedy all too common, one the mage had seen countless times before. If not for the recent disgust he felt over the neglect given to Willow Rosenberg, the mage would have notified the Watcher's Council to do something about sending this girl a Watcher, which would at least have taken care of her basic needs, then gone on with his life without a single thought back on the topic of the petty thief.

But the agony of the wound of seeing Willow's sorry state would not let him leave it at that. Being a gypsy, he had nothing against her being a pickpocket or a petty thief. His people were justly infamous for being those themselves. And also famous for taking (in some case kidnapping) children to raise for their own, especially runaways or orphans like this one.

Sadly, the man known to a select few as Mr Mage Dude had no time to take in a fosterling of his own. Nor was the custom of adoption strong enough in the younger generations for him to just foist her off onto one of the younger members of his clan who had free time available.

The older ones, like him, were either too tired or too busy, most of them on important clan business from which they could not be interrupted without consequences which would be dire.

Caught between his desire to provide care for the girl and his inability to do so, the mage decided to do the best he could by combining several of these approaches. He would send the young girl off to live with a younger member of his clan, because the only guarantee of failure was not to try, and it might just be they'd be lucky and it would do both the girl and his great nephew some good. But in case that did not work out right he would also notify the Watcher's Council of her presence.

Then, to add a bit of insurance to both of those, he added a spell muttered under his breath, a "Damsel in Distress" marker used in the old days as a sort of hero magnet, although it had always added a sort of allure to young ladies that made men more interested in caring for them.

That would perhaps be enough to get his modernized nephew to want to care enough for their clan traditions to take the young girl in. So, concluding that spell with the marker now in place, he put money in the girl's hands and sent the hypnotized young lady off to the airport to purchase a ticket to LA, a letter of introduction to his nephew in her pocket.

Now once more out of time, Mr. Mage Dude went on his way to that meeting.

I O I O I

"So, what all did you get, oh Masked Avenger and protector of innocent maidens?" Amy coitishly confronted the young man in his house while Jesse was sticking a tape in the VCR behind them and Willow had gone off to relieve severe bladder distress caused by not wanting to be away from Xander's side a single minute. Amy batted her eyelashes at the new Xander. "Or should we just assume that you are going to be sliding down poles to your Batcave any minute or go rushing off to find Lost Arks?"

The youth in question took her hand and bowed over it, grinning roguishly. "Ah, just the basic package." He waited a moment as he heard a toilet flush in the background, and soon they had Willow with them to overhear his brief summation. "Due to my rather generous progenitors, I have have training but no experience in being an expert swordsman, rider, general athlete, manager of estates (according to firm farm practices and codes of laws that sadly no longer exist), minstrel and dancer (both in styles you'd find rather tedious, if not outright painful), dandy and fop, as well as fluent proficiency in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch and of course English."

"Why so many languages?" Willow furrowed her head as she wormed her way back into Xander's side, where he most graciously accepted her, having already released Amy's hand. There was a bit of scowling on the redhead's part for the blonde's poaching while she'd been absent, but the quick pout of both grief and remorse, intermixed with sorrow, turned a bit of that into guilt on Willow's part for hurting her rival when she was on top of things.

Not enough guilt to get her to share or anything, of course.

Xander very appropriately appeared to ignore this tiny little exchange. It was just polite manners to pretend certain things didn't happen, even though most of the gossip behind closed doors was about picking apart every tiny little detail of them.

"Spanish is obvious," he declared, drawing the ladies' attention back to the question. "It was the native language of my glorious ancestor. Naturally he wished for me to speak it, especially around the ranch, and while training it was the default language of choice. Portuguese is obvious, also, as they're so closely related one may as well call the one a dialect of the other. Plus, we Spaniards have fought too many wars with our Portuguese neighbors not to know their language. The latter goes for French and English, of course. Our fleets clashed often enough, and prisoners taken with sufficient regularity, as to make them nearly a necessity for any well-bred noble for whom escape was the only alternative to paying an expensive ransom."

He coughed delicately into a handkerchief he had produced for the occasion. "That's the romantic view, of course. In truth, Spain, while proud, had very little art or poetry to compare to France's accomplishments in those areas. So, to provoke one's mind away from boredom, visits to France and imported French literature were hardly uncommon among the upper crust, when we weren't at war, that is. Also, between the Dutch and the English, there was very little world trade they did not dominate. So learning those languages was sadly a necessity for anyone wanting to travel, which Don Diego did later in life."

Elegantly tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket, he declared, "Also, I have a scholarly, yet not fluent, grasp of both Latin and Greek. I read them quite proficiently, but speak poorly. The mastery of those tongues was the mark of any educated person, and most of the grand works were written in them. Although there was still a market to be had for trashy French novels, of course." He finished with a petite smile. "But no one would admit to that."

Jesse cried out with triumph over getting the tape to play, and as the group moved to join him, Xander added one last comment, "As something of an afterthought, my relatives saw to it I was worked through all of the books I'd previously sprained my brain memorizing."

"So what are we watching?" Amy changed the subject so she could divert some of Willow's glares from her.

"Teenage Cannibal Stewardess Vixens Unchained," Jesse supplied with a bright smile, claiming one of the big recliners with a good view of the set, before he endured the pelting of small objects the girls threw at him. "Just kidding," he raised his arms, laughing. "It's an old classic: Grease, since I figured we would all soon be High School students."

"Mmm," Willow gave out a satisfied sound as she joined Xander on the plush sofa. "So who brought treaties?"

"One moment please," Xander dashed into the kitchen with a touch of ungentlemanly haste, reappearing moments later with a traditional bowl of popcorn and tray of finger foods. Amy, who had dashed along to help, found the only thing left another large bowl and, while she brought it out, found herself lifting aside the cloth covering it and staring down into the contents before raising her eyes to Xander.

"You're kidding, right?"

"No, no, no!" Xander bubbled cheerily, stepping up to her side. "At first I thought 'Aha! I will use a transformation cantrip to change a Twinkie into actual food, thus enabling me to chomp on their yellow goodness while still remaining within Willow's dietary guidelines.' But then it came to me, during the midst of my preparations for retaining the vital appearance, taste and feel of a Twinkie in spite of having actual nutritional value, that the cantrip would merely expire and my masterwork would revert to a solid chemical composition during digestion anyway. But that led to the OTHER discovery! And a far more important one, even if I do say so myself! For, you see, if whatever I transformed was going to revert in my stomach due to the spells' short duration, then I could transform ANY FOOD I WANTED INTO TWINKIES and shortly after enjoying their delectable goodness they would regain their nutritional content! Thus, I present to you Example A, which used to be a bag full of brussel sprouts." He pulled off the cloth with a dramatic flourish and waved to a revealed basket full of Twinkies, before taking and consuming one with a huge smile on his face.

Laughing, Amy selected one, while Willow waited until he sat down, then she snuggling into his side reached over and took one too.

Jesse hit the 'Play' button on the remote control.

I O I O I

While the movie wound down Jesse, sprawled as he was over a very plush recliner, lazily considered the changes in his friends. He didn't think it through with complete clarity, and he definitely didn't voice them or write them down for later, but his summations were mostly accurate.

One of the first and most obvious things to note, as Willow was positively thrumming with happiness as she clung to Xander's side getting a massive charge out of the 'Together Forever' song the movie ended with, was that in the wake of the massive shock of discovering that vampires and other icky nasties existed, was that each of them had reached out in their own way for something to anchor them.

Willow had grasped on to Xander, obviously. But then again so had Amy. Both chose the empowered one as their rock to shield them from this storm, and Jesse had to admit that looked plausibly logical on the face of it, stand by the guy prepared to deal with things and you ought to be alright.

Xander himself was less prepared to deal with things than either girl would like to admit. Jesse could see that... well, up until yesterday at any rate. His oldest friend had been changed by meeting his ancestors (and who would have guessed that he had ZORRO of all people in his family tree?!)

Before casting that 'meet my ancestors' spell Xander had been on shaky ground, putting his trust in Mr. Mage Dude that his preparations would be enough to see them through - but it was kind of hard to trust a guy you'd never recall seeing and knew no details about. Besides, the knowledge base, while useful and giving an excellent start, wasn't complete or all they'd need.

No, that had been a shaky anchor, but still the best one Xander had until he'd gone and gotten personal training by one of the most legendary figures in California's history. Now he'd placed his trust in Zorro, and it looked like his old friend was a thousand times better anchored against the stresses that accompanied their new knowledge than before.

Jesse admitted to himself that his own anchor had become faith. He knew his friends too well to place all of his trust in them. They'd been, all of them (him included) losers and goofballs too long for his deep, gut instincts to believe they alone could save themselves against the newly revealed supernatural horrors. It was fine to try, but they'd needed something beyond their own efforts to succeed. And Jesse had found the answer in faith.

Believe in God, that he could save them? Oh yes, he could do that. It didn't even matter, strictly speaking, if they'd died, as the divine still had power to save their souls.

That was something he could believe in, could use as his anchor, and privately he wondered if he mightn't have the strongest anchor of them all.

A very small core of fear still deep within his heart hoped and prayed they never had to face that test, that he'd never be forced to see any of his friends broken or destroyed by the dangers they now realized existed.

But a small part of him also realized that he might.

I O I O I

After waking up, Xander only had to make a sword (with silver inlaid cross at the tip) and summon a pooka of his many times great grandfather's steed before he could go into the hero business himself.

The pooka was the easy part, and the mighty steed Tornado was once again ready to bear a hero into battle.

The sword was not much harder, although it took quite some doing to make a proper blade. In olden days the question of victory was determined not just by the skill of a swordsman, but by the perfection of his blade, and it took no small amount of work to make a fine one.

Luckily, all of the finest swords out of antiquity were made, in no small part, by magic. Ancient smiths recited psalms or spells as they hammered, and the best knew magical secrets not even the finest technology could match. Legendary wootz steel was almost entirely a product of magic, for example.

Zorro had known and passed on to Xander not only the secrets of ancient Toledo steel manufacture, but of lost Gypsy secrets as well, back from an age when those mysterious wanderers were at the height of their magic, and could produce weapons that rivaled the famous Toledo blades. Only a few magician smiths could boast as much.

Those secrets, combined with those recorded in the Japanese manual that Mr. Mage Dude provided, and Xander was prepared to create a blade of truly legendary magnificence.

But that would take time. So, for the moment, he contented himself with a cheap, ten dollar sword stamped by mass production machinery out of pot metal, that he could pick up at a corner pawn shop.

Sheltering in a church, ready with holy water balloons in case they needed to cover his retreat, the trio of Jesse, Willow and Amy watched Xander use his new skills, and rather cheap blade, to ambush a pair of wandering vamps, late at night.

It was like watching a cat play with mice.

It almost didn't matter that the boy had no sword worthy of the name, as his bullwhip was almost more deadly.

Xander used his whip mostly to slice open pockets, pull away bracelets, rings or other jewelry, before slaughtering the vamps, effectively robbing them so the loot did not go to dust as he sliced off their heads with his sword.

He did this mostly because his official guardian, Rory, wouldn't let him touch any of the money he'd gotten from his parents' deaths until he was eighteen, and Rory was determined to force Xander to be responsible with a small allowance first.

Well, with parents like his had been, Xander couldn't blame Rory for assuming the worst about his ability to act responsibly. However, a small allowance wasn't going to put him in the vampire staking business. There was expensive stuff to be found or made, yes, but some of it still had to be purchased, and he wasn't going to be able to do that on a comic book stipend.

So he found himself in a surprising situation of being in possession of great wealth, and yet living as poorly as before.

One of the great twists there was finding each of his parents had bought a car in the other's name, a high end sports car and a really attractive luxury sedan (both status-mobiles) and hidden them away for the 'afterwards' celebration - but Rory doesn't let him use them, putting them up on blocks so that Xander could learn to drive on a junker that won't matter too much for his first couple of accidents, and so that he can learn auto repair.

Both of the cars his parents bought were VMIs (Vehicular Manifestations of Inadequacy), attempts to compensate for their own failings by having really cool cars. The one his dad had purchased and squirreled away was a really nice, bright red jaguar. But his mother's blew him away. She'd gotten (how he didn't know) a silver Rolls Royce Phantom with the extended wheelbase.

Xander's Uncle Rory wouldn't let him touch either of those two cars until he hit his eighteenth birthday - which was reasonable from the perspective the adult stood at, namely no teenager has ever taken good care of their first car (or so Rory thought), and it was better to get all of that out of your system on an old beater that nobody would miss, rather than a million dollar sedan that royalty would not feel out of place in.

Yes, Xander's parents had somehow finagled (don't ask him how, he couldn't tell ya) to get those extra powerful engines and armored inserts normally reserved for celebrity conveyances.

Hey, Sunnydale was a dangerous town. He could see somebody in the know wanting such design features. He just had a hard time picturing how two no accounts like his parents had GOTTEN them!

And the entire thing, every bit of it, had been sheltered under a little-known sort of trust usually the province of the very, Very rich that divided it all up into its own separate cubbyholes and engaged in enough legal chicanery to beggar disbelief, but had managed to preserve all of his parents' assets, every dime of them, while negating all of the bills.

Xander hadn't believed such a thing was possible until he'd seen it in action. But, that was what top lawyers got paid big money for, he supposed. That his mom had even known a clerk in such a place, able to copy enough paperwork and get a junior lawyer to work on the forms enough to get it happen was no small accomplishment.

But she had done so.

Be that as it may, he now had a car, as Rory felt there was no way to keep a teenager wheel-less when he had two such grand prizes to his name. So, to prevent adolescent swindling of the really expensive automobiles out onto the roads, he'd gifted him with a starter car.

It was a beater, a rusted shut 57 chevy that, if it had seen better days, they were awhile ago. However, the promise of his uncle was that if he could fix it up, then he'd take him in to get his driver's license.

Wheels meant status, especially for High School Freshmen, even in spite of having been nerdy outcasts before.

Xander was no longer the desperate teen needing attention that he once was, however Jesse WAS, and even Willow could use the confidence boost that came from an image upgrade. Plus, having been raised by Zorro, Xander now knew just how valuable a thing societal status could be - and how to use it.

Well, you can't use it if you don't have it, and getting it was something of a problem under ordinary circumstances, particularly when you had years of being a bottom feeder to counteract. So, having a car and driver's license was a downright necessity to start their high school careers with.

Thus fortified with courage and determination, the teens sat around looking at the old bucket of rust that was Xander's new car.

"I'm lost." Jesse shrugged.

"It's hopeless." Amy agreed.

"Maybe we could paint over the worst of it?" Willow tried to offer helpfully, but her doubts could easily be read in her voice.

Xander approached the vehicle, up on blocks and missing tires, looking for all the world like some kind of car zombie, an undead automobile surrounded by the skeletons of other wrecks in the scrap yard. He flicked a spot of rust and mused thoughtfully, "Well, if this were smaller, maybe some of those spells in that 'care of weapons and armor' spellbook could do something. It is, after all, just rusted metal, and those spells claim to be able to cure SMALL patches of that. It's just this is waaay outside that zone!"

Talk of magic immediately perked the group up. That was something they were good at, and quite frankly, this job looked like nothing else would do it.

"Well, what about breaking it down into smaller bits?" Jesse offered, feeling the first twinges of hope. "If we could disassemble the thing, maybe the parts would be small enough to use those spells on?"

Xander touched an exposed bolt and snorted. "Maybe. But it's rusted shut. You'd need the strength of a demon to screw this off."

"How about if we enlarge it?" Amy offered hopefully. All eyes turned to her and she explained. "I did that once when my mom handcuffed me to my bed for a ritual I didn't want to take part in. I'm sorry, but losing weight by having demon spiders crawl over you to perform liposuction is SO not my deal! But when she was getting all trance-like to get to the summoning, I used a minor growth spell on my handcuffs. Once they grew to basketball hoop size it was easy to slip them off and sneak away. I never did tell my mom how that spell failed. But if you just expand the nuts off the bolts?"

Startled, Xander thought of the rules of magic he knew and produced a cantrip that should have the effects he wanted. Applying that to the nut on an exposed bolt, the little loop of metal expanded to about twice its size and sprang right off.

Xander caught it in his hand, a smile growing on his face.

Willow was beaming, clapping her hands together in joy. "Okay! Now all we have to do is learn those rust removing spells!"

"Hang on just a second," Xander whispered, trying to concentrate. "I know those spells, but I think it better if we take those principals they are based on to make a practice cantrip set for us to use. We are, after all, going to be doing a lot of this," he waved absently to the rust-mobile, "And I don't want us to miss out on a training opportunity. Besides," this time he gave them a wide grin. "The spells in the Japanese book about enchanting weapons and armor don't cover this extent of rust damage. So we'll have to start small, on stuff like this bolt. But if we use our tutorial cantrip method to start, we can do that, then eventually move up to larger parts, and then hopefully get to the frame!"

He opened his hand to reveal the nut, now rust free, resting in his palm.

"Hurray!" the group cried, then got to work helping him disassemble, then repair the automobile, shrinking bolts and enlarging nuts as needed.

Not far into this process they learned one of the great truths of auto mechanics. "Help! I can't lift this thing!" gasped Amy, struggling under the weight of a part that she had just taken off.

Fortunately, it wasn't too large a one, and the two boys were able to rush to her rescue, between them heaving it off of her, and setting it safely aside.

Then it was time to make jokes.

"Hey, Amy, looks like it's time to hit those weights! Man! I can't believe you can't bench press a car yet. Are you not eating your Wheaties?"

"Somebody make me a levitation charm," Amy growled dangerously.

"Poof! You're a levitation charm!" Jesse snarked, right before she chased him around the scrap yard behind Rory's auto body shop.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

What can I say? I felt like pulling this down off of the Dead Story pile for a brief look-see at what I'd planned for it before. There exist so many plans for this...

Actually, I think what killed this the most was the utter disinterest that people at a Xander-centric forum had in it. They, who claimed as their central interest Xander-focused stories, told me that it wasn't worth reading because I was taking so long to get Buffy into it.

Huh?

Oh well, no accounting for taste, I guess. 


	11. Chapter 11

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Eleven

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Feedback is the coin of the realm.

I O I O I

Naturally, after Xander's experience, everybody was eager to try out that Ancestor Guide spell to see what it could do for them.

Its results on Xander were too positive to ignore, and they all wanted a taste to see what it could do to improve their lives. The Scoobies could sense they were actually feeling on the verge of being useful demon hunters, here. They had Xander as point man, the main combat type, and the rest of them were learning spells at a pace that was downright shocking.

As in so many things, Throckmorton's theories had proven correct. They had remained untested for hundreds of years, because they were by far the stuffiest, least fun, and most backwards-seeming way to learn magic, but with the power of that hypnotic trance to memorize his book, the Scoobies were able to shortcut past the "this is too dull to be endured" stage that had stopped everyone else, on to where the actual practice started to take place.

And that was where Throckmorton's whole philosophy of magic took hold and began to thrive. Actually starting out at the "you know the theory, make a cantrip" stage skipped the impassably dull part, and their magical educations were really taking off, with all of them having mastered several categories of basic spells.

Most classes of magic users were helpless without a spell. They would spend tireless hours pouring through old tomes and books looking for one that did something that fit what they needed done.

But, with Throckmorton's theories pouring out their ears, the Scoobies didn't need to do that. Anytime they needed a spell, they could make one to do the job. Those spells they devised might start out pathetic, but they taught you what you needed to know to build the next one, then the next. And soon even the basic magic they were wielding turned very flexible.

It was really very liberating.

Having spent a few days getting bored of the games at the arcade had lent them advanced mastery of the basic transformative cantrips to the point where those didn't teach them anything anymore. Now, as a group, they had moved on to taking only a hammer or a wrench as they did auto work, and transforming that one tool into all the others needed for those repairs.

The cantrips for sprouting and growing seeds they used were now so good they generally got a plant a foot or two high on a casting, and Xander was far out ahead of the rest in that he could get flower seeds all the way to bloom, provided the plant type wasn't too bushy. So Willow got to enjoy bouquets of wildflowers, lilies, tulips and so on that he gave her, but would have to wait on the roses. Too much plant matter for his spells to create yet.

Their cosmetic spells were advanced, and getting better all of the time. The girls took to them out of natural interest, and Xander enjoyed great recent practice out of concealing pencil stab marks on bodies, but even Jesse knew enough from comic books to know that should a hero be recognized, then all sorts of dangers against him multiplied. So everyone was expanding their skill bases there out of desires to stay disguised, and were by now leaning heavily in the direction of stage makeup and costumes.

The better to avoid detection and not be recognized.

Back to that "All warfare is based on deception," angle. The group wanted to seem inactive, unable, and far away on the demon hunting angle, especially the more they got active, able and near. And they figured Zorro had the right idea about not letting an enemy see who you really were under that disguise.

The aura-cloaking cantrips they'd devised were now bearing fruit, turning into spells that stayed up more than a handful of minutes at a time. Likewise the wards they'd been putting over their houses were improving in all ways - staying up longer, and being stronger in general, as their need for those things had been so great they'd been engaging in ceaseless practice. They'd even begun combining the two, concealing the wards over their homes, as it just sounded far more secure to all of them not to let anyone out there know, at a glance, that their houses were warded. Otherwise those parties might begin to get curious about who was doing the warding and why, and that just sounded like far too much trouble that they didn't want.

Household cleaning charms were getting them out of their chores in almost no time at all, and their homes were cleaner than they'd ever been, so much so that now Amy's mom was beginning to campaign for having her own little hypnotism session, as, aside from Throckmorton's tutorial cantrips which got better all of the time, most household charms were in the vicinity of as much effort as the housework they replaced.

The Scoobies were also exploring cooking charms to go with those.

Xander and Jesse had plenty of old clothes for the entire group to practice sewing cantrips on. And the whole group had gotten into the practice, with Amy's mom offering her place to do the work at (mostly because the older witch was growing increasingly jealous of their magical successes, and was trying to emulate them - and, since Amy's mom was quickly becoming 'one of the gang', sooner or later they were going to give in to her and let the lady have her own hypno-learning session).

Catherine Madison's life had peaked during her High School years, when she'd been at the top of her heap, and life ever since for her had been a letdown. It had done odd things to her personality, and she behaved more like the High School kid she'd been rather than the adult she was. It made her hard to see as any sort of role model, but much easier for the group to befriend.

Amy's mom actually seemed to be reinforcing that, treating her daughter's friends as equals instead of children. It wasn't normal, but then what about their group was?

Mrs. Madison had seen how quickly the group was skyrocketing in skill and simply included herself, attending all of their martial arts and gymnastics classes, huffing and puffing along with the other students, one of her own ape charms on her wrist.

The lady couldn't join them for everything, she had a job, after all. But she did what she could to go along, and had successfully cleared enough off her schedule to be able to attend their martial arts courses, working hard to catch up to the rest of them and using the same memorization charms and metabolism enhancers they were to do it.

It was a bit freaky, but she had volunteered to add yoga classes to their list, and had even promised to go looking for another instructor for them to add to their martial arts repertoire.

She'd also produced a very old tome detailing secrets of Damascus to add to Xander's already formidable knowledge in the area of magical smithing.

Actually, the Scoobies were beginning to welcome her, not just because of that, but that the immature grownup had chosen to fund all of their summer courses out of her own budget, thus freeing up the children's pocket money for other vital causes, of which they had many.

Of course, Cathy was also applying pressure on the two girls to join her for cheer practice, saying it was only right they get a head start on the other girls, and simply assuming that her daughter and Willow both wanted to be cheerleaders in high school.

One of those blind spots again. It had been fun and fulfilling for her, and she simply assumed it would be just as much of a success for them.

Of course, there was more to sewing than the needle and thread equivalent of their stitching cantrip. They also had to create one to cut, like a pair of scissors, and also to glue, crimp, fold, pin, pleat, press, fluff, dye, measure, starch and so on.

And it was going to take everything they had to restore the upholstery of Xander's automobile, as everything perishable on that car had perished.

The most recent expansion of their spell knowledge came as a direct result of fixing up that beat up car. They'd actually not gotten sufficient practice on restoring the small parts of that car to move on to the larger pieces, so they'd resorted to picking up odd bits and pieces, fallen nuts and bolts and so on from other autos decaying out in that scrap yard, helping them build up their skills on the small spells enough to move up a step and begin working on larger ones. They weren't quite to the level where they could do a fender yet, but the progress looked great so far, and it wouldn't be long before one of them could do the frame.

The cantrips they were using for this restoration work did not remove metal, they restored it, reconfiguring the rust back into what it used to be. Even, as they got better, collected fallen powder from the area to restore pitted or disintegrating pieces to full, original manufacturers specs.

So rust posed no problem to the kids, the only problem they had was practice to get those spells right so they could move on to more complex and capable ones. And, by the time they could restore the larger parts like engine blocks and frame, they'd have covered so much of the medium size and smaller pieces that the only thing left was reassembling the vehicle.

The Scoobies had already appealed to Xander's Uncle Rory for beater cars of their own. Since the rusted hulks were practically worthless as they were, a quick dip into the Madison family vacation savings (and a canceled trip to Six Flags they would hardly miss) and Rory had agreed without trouble, letting each select and buy their own rusted hulks.

Everybody was by now plotting to repeat Xander's trick of going through a new memorization session with those auto service and repair manuals as part of the download, as that was the last main hurdle to having some really nice cars - simply knowing what to do to put them back together again!

Once they solved that, they'd be getting another 57 Chevy (Willow), Amy had her eyes on a Volkswagen Bus, and Jesse had laid claim to and begun fondling a classic Mustang while muttering "My Precious", (although the Mustang had long ago been stripped of parts they'd have to scrounge replacements for).

Xander had burrowed deep into the pile of old wrecks and selected a second car for himself - a 67 Camaro. While Cathy, who was funding this entire car buying bonanza by skipping a trip this year, had gotten herself a Corvette Stingray that had been totaled in an accident (nothing they couldn't fix).

They expected these to make them very popular at school.

The gang was already working on what Xander called their "Car repair toolkit" with cantrips for spinning small objects this way and that (for getting bolts in and nuts on, since shrinking and enlarging, while great for getting those parts off, would hurt the threads if they tried those for putting them back on), minor telekinetic spells for easing those same nuts and bolts into hard to reach places, and other spells they expected to use during the assembly.

They drew ideas from other spellbooks, but more and more they'd been relying on their handy tutorial cantrips, as those, while they might start out small, quickly led to better and better results.

More importantly, they'd thought ahead, and were preparing cantrips based on the enchantment of armor spells Xander knew, for applying to their cars.

Although in that case the finished spells were good enough they might just skip the tutorial cantrip stage and go with the established stuff.

Riding by a pawn shop on their way home, Xander pulled in when he recalled it had a large, fairly cheap selection of guitars and other materials. 'I guess with all the people dying, there's more stuff than people to buy it,' he mused.

The Sunnydale thrift stores had some of the best materials to be found anywhere, on up to including fur coats, expensive appliances and jewelry. Dumping everything at Goodwill was just one standard method the cops had for disposing of the belongings of the deceased, and with the death rate as it was, there was a lot of volume to handle and tons of good stuff thrown in with the dross.

The car junkyards had an amazing selection of classic vehicles, as once again the cops just drove unclaimed vehicles, property of murder victims and so on there, parked them and left them. And they had been doing this practically since the invention of the car!

Xander grinned as he checked out the selection. Oh yes! He could use some of this! After all, his parents had not been all that keen about buying him new clothes or stuff during their spending spree.

Then the boy scowled, having another thought, and sighed. It was unpleasant, but despite that he'd probably have to do it.

Leaving the store, he turned his bike another way. If he judged this properly he had time to get there, have a decent discussion, then get back on time, ie, before dark.

I O I O I

"Cordelia, hi."

"Xander, hi. To what do I owe the displeasure? I mean, last thing I knew I was ordering a pizza, not 'dial a loser'."

Xander slapped a bank statement up against the screen door that his ancient nemesis had carefully not opened when she'd seen who was at her door. This he followed by two car photos in the other hand.

"I'm worth thirty million dollars now, Cordelia. And these two photos, the jag and the Rolls Royce are cars that I happen to own. My parents died and had some hefty insurance, so I'm filthy rich now."

Stared at doubtfully by the girl, who leaned over to peruse the statement more carefully, Xander watched with a smirk as her eyes widened and she suddenly became all smiles.

"Come in!" Cordelia opened the screen door for him.

Xander surprised her by being just as gracious a guest as she was a host, being very gallant in an old fashioned way. If this were the old, penny-poor loser Xander she would've been annoyed at the antiquated manners, but as he was arguably as well off as her father now, she chose to see it in a more positive light.

"So, obviously you're here to date me, and I accept..." Cordelia began, once she'd navigated him to a cozy room where they could talk.

"No," he interrupted, shaking his head once as he first stoked a few keys on her piano then sat on her sofa. "Sorry, but there are four things you need to know. One, I am already going out with Willow and am very happy with her. Two, I can't touch the money or the cars until I'm legally an adult. Three, I still have traumatic flashbacks to certain moments in our shared childhoods I'm too polite to comment upon, and Four, I'm here in a professional capacity."

Before she could get any misapprehensions about what profession he was talking about, Xander drilled her in the eyes with a calm gaze and stated, "I know you've always wanted to be a fashion consultant. Well, there were those times you wanted to be a model, or an actress, or president of some company, too. And, once, before a certain shuttle blew up, you'd wanted to be an astronaut. But let's stick to the fashion consultant for now."

Xander leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, and maintaining eye contact, told her, "I'm here to hire you to de-nerdify our group."

She stared at him in shock for a minute and a half. Finally, she swiped a lock of hair out of her face, and scowled, looking down as she sat back in her chair. "That's a tall order."

He placed a contract on the table, followed by a pink slip. "There a Camaro in it for you. I took the liberty of pricing the car, and one just like it just sold for nearly seventy thousand dollars. It's classic, mint condition, has a few options, and ought to make you Miss Popularity, even more than you already are. It will be delivered on the first day of school, provided that you've done due diligence in getting us prepared over the summer. You get to keep it, on condition that you maintain our image as cool kids all through high school. We agree to follow your reasonable advice, and you make sure we're well trained and prepared, advising us as necessary. On graduation day, the car is yours to keep. Not bad for your first professional fashion consultant job, is it? One successful job makes you a pro and is your key to entering the industry."

"I don't think one car is enough for all the work." Cordelia said doubtfully. "I mean, we're talking you, Willow, and my own personal stalker. Three total goof balls as low on the social ladder as you can go without digging."

"Four. Amy Madison is now a part of our group." Xander said reasonably.

"Oh? So, you're like, contagious, now?" the princess was plainly revolted.

"No. We're recovering. Like Alcoholics Anonymous. 'Every day, and in every way, I am getting less and less socially revolting,' and all that."

"That's good to hear," Cordelia was nodding, still revolted.

Xander leaned back. "Look, we're working out and toning our bodies. Amy is going to be as trim as you are in two weeks. Jesse and I are buffing up. We are taking martial art courses, and eating healthy. By the time school starts we'll be too good looking for you to treat us like the dirt you have. We'll have cool cars of our own, my guardian has already agreed to sign me up for that wonderful special exemption in California law that lets a kid who has to drive as part of his job get his license at fourteen. Amy's mom the same. We have an appointment at the school to test out of our language courses, and pretty soon the rest of us will match Willow's grades. Also, I'm filthy rich, and have no problems noising that about so certain parties hear about it."

He gave her an amused gaze. "That's A students, jocks and wheels, three of the four social bases covered. Face it, we have advantages enough on our own to be middling popular. We only need you for the final edge, and there are probably fifty girls who can help us pick out clothes well enough to get by."

He spread his hands. "Just none as well as you. That's the reason I am swallowing my own personal anti-Cordelia prejudice and coming to you with our offer. But, if it would mean too little for you..."

He leaned forward to reach for the contract and pink slip, only to have his hand stopped. Looking up, he saw Cordelia's mind was racing.

She licked her lips in thought, checking out the young man before her. Her own parents were being stubborn about lying on those forms to get her a license early. And he was buffing up, she could see tone muscles rippling over his body in ways they decidedly hadn't only four weeks ago, when she'd last seen him at Junior High graduation.

He moved like a jock already, all muscley, cool and confident in so very un-Xander a way that she'd at first had moments of doubt. But she was too cool herself to believe in anything so nerdy as pod-people.

Real confidence was rare enough among children and teenagers that was what gave Cordelia her own edge in making up her own group of followers. If Xander had it, then he was already up off the bottom and rising fast.

She sighed, again flicking away a stray hair as she considered. On the one hand, this was going to take so much work, on the other...

Finally, she said, "There's only six weeks left of summer. That's not a lot of time to work with. I mean, you guys need complete makeovers: hair, nails, entire wardrobes, social graces, not to mention cataloging all that's in and out. I don't even know if you can learn all of that in so short a time. I mean, face it, you guys made Neanderthals look well adjusted to the social scene."

"I wouldn't be paying you so much if it were any less," he calmly told her.

"But even if the car is worth all you say it is, for four years work, that's less than twenty thousand dollars a year! That's so no go! I don't do minimum wage, not even as favors for friends. Which, yeah, you aren't. So..?" She left the thread dangling, hoping to draw in more goodies.

"There's no reason we have to be your only clients." Xander leaned back in his chair. "I mean, even for those minimum wage folk, they don't earn that selling one hamburger. Think about it."

"You could still pay more. You just told me you are a millionaire, right?"

"I can't touch the money til I'm eighteen. And, you've got to consider, there are others who'd take this job for less than I'm offering you. What about Harmony? Isn't she still your chief flunky? Number two on the hot list? I bet if I were to take this offer to her, she'd jump at it in a heartbeat, and she's not much less of a fashion goddess than you."

There came muffled sounds from around a bend in a hallway, and Cordelia figured she'd have to wrap this up quick. "Alright. You've got a deal. Be here at ten tomorrow morning. I'll start taking you around to the places you've got to go as recovering social rejects. Oh, and be prepared to spend a lot of money. The salons and things you guys need aren't cheap."

"Make it one in the afternoon. We've got classes all morning."

"Classes? What for? Isn't this summer?"

"All those martial arts courses I was talking about."

"All morning?" Cordelia was disbelieving.

Xander nodded, completely collected and self assured. "Yes. We're taking a lot of them."

"Why?" the princess felt confused.

Xander gave her a casual shrug. "To no longer be bully bait, of course. They have some habits they've got to break, and we're going to help them break them, by breaking the bullies if necessary. Training to do that takes a lot of time, if we want to be ready by first day of school."

Cordelia smirked. "So, is Rodney Munson in for a surprise?"

"Yes, I think so," Xander replied affably.

She snorted. "You just don't like him 'cause of that time he beat you up every day for five years."

Xander shrugged. "Yeah. I'm irrational that way."

Cordelia got up. "So, see you at one. Oh, and leave your evening free as well. You may be dating Willow now, but I still have to teach you how to date. Too great a chance for you two to squirrel away in a stack of books otherwise, thinking it was romantic, and that could poison your popularity."

The boy thought about it, then nodded. Cordelia showed him to the door. Once he was gone, and she was resting smugly, a grin on her face and she leaned back against her front door, her Cordettes came swarming out of the back hall they'd been waiting and listening in.

Harmony was a touch peeved that others had silenced her, so she couldn't rush out and take up Xander's offer.

"You're so going to steal him from Rosenberg, aren't you?" One of her friends predicted. "That's what that dating thing is all about, isn't it?"

"Of course!" Cordy gloated, springing out from leaning against the door. "I like guys. Especially the car owning, rich, with killer bods and rippling six packs that incite lusty thoughts variety. And Xander just happens to be all of the above. Nor is he dumb as dirt, like most jocks are. Plus, he's a musician, and those practically define hotness!"

"How can you tell he's a musician?" Harmony asked, having missed that.

Cordy generously deigned to supply that information. "When he walked by my dad's piano. He played the first few bars of a piece that's fairly advanced, so he's been practicing music. I wonder what else he's been hiding?" She cocked her hip and thought.

Then the doorbell rang, and the pizza they'd ordered arrived.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

I rather like this story. It makes me feel good. 


	12. Chapter 12

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Twelve

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Feedback is the coin of the realm.

I O I O I

"EAAaaHHh!!" Cordelia threw up her hands. "I can't believe how dumb you guys are! Get it RIGHT!"

In truth, they had been doing very little wrong, and it was maddening to the ever-popular girl just how shallow they were making her seem. They learned everything she told them after a single repetition. They were quiet and respectful, even deferential at times...

... but the rate at which they'd reduced the work of her lifetime to... to... to a pop quiz (and one with easy answers at that) was driving her crazy!

"Thank you Cordelia. That will be all," Xander told her coolly.

Reminded by his tone, Queen C instantly worked to recompose herself. "Not just yet, Xander. There's still practicing how to date." She gave him a winning smile - easily provoked by those thoughts of his money, muscles and cars.

"No. You don't understand." He shook his head without the slightest tinge of remorse. "Perhaps you didn't read your contract? Abusive language on your part was specifically forbidden under terms it specified. You are in breech of the terms of our agreement, and our relationship is at an end. Good day."

"WHAT?!" the popular girl's face went wild.

"You've been fired without pay for breech of contract," Willow told her with a satisfied smirk. "You've been snarking at us all day."

"I'm so very disappointed in you, Cordy," Jesse was shaking his head. "I mean, I put money on you. And you let me down."

"You guys had a bet?" Cordelia was unable to believe her ears.

"Yeah." Jesse admitted, looking sad. "We bet over whether you could put the past behind you, and act like a human being towards us, or not."

"I won," Xander snarked.

"And I lost," Jesse admitted mournfully, reaching into his wallet. "Here, Xander. One dollar."

"Thank you, Jesse!" the descendant of Zorro clapped his buddy on the shoulder after receiving the bill.

"A dollar?" Cordelia was unable to believe her ears.

"It's all you were worth," Willow told her with a confident smirk.

"Actually, it's about ninety cents more than you were worth," Amy added. Sighing, she shook her head in pretend surprise. "Ah, me. Losing out on all of Xander's money, and that yummy Camaro, because she's such a bitch. Why, we'll just have to tell everyone in school! Wouldn't want any of those football players to fall prey to her trap."

"Well, honestly, the football players could hardly care," Willow told her friend as the group of Scoobies departed. "I mean, all they are after is for her to spread her legs the once. So it doesn't matter to them what her personality is like, so long as she can keep her mouth shut one evening. They aren't in it for keepers."

"That's right! And she can be Queen of 'Wham! Bam! Thank you ma'am!' with her personality just the way it is. Oh, I'm so relieved!" Amy laughed, and the whole group piled into her mom's borrowed car and drove off.

Cordelia was left, for once in her life, utterly speechless. She'd just been totally owned by a group of bottom feeders, and it looked like she'd even given them ammunition to hurt her with at school!

They were in a position to destroy her, and it was a totally unexpected reversal. About the only good point, Cordelia reflected, was that her own Cordettes had not been there to witness her disgrace.

Then her expression hardened. Oh! Xander would SO live to regret this! And then she would have him BEGGING to date her and give her that car anyway!

She would get her man, and make him believe it was his idea all along! Then she could dump him and rub HIS face in it!

It was only fair, after all.

I O I O I

The Scoobies were happy.

They had learned so much, and all of it free!

Amy and Willow only had to visit the expensive beauticians once to see the styles and then could recreate them with magic anytime they wanted. They'd even sat there, having the salons wipe their previous work to do them over again as if for a variety of special occasions.

Now they could redo that makeup in seconds. And thanks to fixative spells it would always look perfect, even after working out at gym.

Nothing Cordy could do could match that.

Spells to aid in memory they'd used in martial arts and hypno-learning lessons had rendered the litany of things they had to memorize to be popular trivial. And while Cordelia hadn't covered everything, she'd covered enough so as to render the rest moot, as they weren't aiming to be on the cutting edge, only not really stand out as too far behind.

That was enough.

Then, of course, there had been interminable rounds of clothes shopping, and while they'd gone through fittings, color analysis, and watched calmly as Cordy chose styles and explained why this worked and that didn't (in between her rounds of insults towards them), they hadn't bought anything.

Because all of those clothes, brand new fashion stuff, were all available in the thrift stores. And, by now, their sewing magic was advanced enough they could alter anything to fit.

They'd have to. There was no other way to get all of those delicate little crosses (and Stars of David), embroidered over key areas (Vampires were very fond of grabbing people around the throat, for one example).

For that matter, that was another advantage they held over Cordelia, as far as fashion went, because they had near infinite ability to alter their clothes. So as fashions changed their wardrobes could continually update to match them without ever having to buy any new attire. Dresses could get longer or shorter, hemlines or bustlines going up or down, adding or removing stylistic features, and it would only improve the sewing cantrips doing them.

Even Cordelia, rich as she was, could only afford to spend so much on clothes. But so long as they cared to put in the effort, neither Amy nor Willow ever had to wear the same outfit twice.

That was if it was that important to them, which it wasn't. The vast social disgrace that was the teenage angst and hormone circus of High School life was centered around both finding yourself, and matching up with someone compatible. And both girls already knew who they wanted. The boy even knew they wanted him, thus skipping out on vast confusion.

Xander had learned a great deal about people during his all too brief period of being a member of the de la Vega family, and they had also done a very great deal to aid him in internalizing the knowledge of those books he'd memorized, so he was at last beginning to make sense out of a great many things.

For example, those parts of Willow's aura, the colors that he had not seen in anyone else, were now appearing in Amy. They had been fitful, ever-present but hardly dominant in Willow before, but since she'd overcome her timidity those colors now boldly patterned over her entire aura.

It was love. Pure and simple, he knew she loved him because he could see it in that place where no one could lie. You could shield an aura so it did not show some parts, but you couldn't put in things that weren't there, not so you could fool anyone with an inner eye, anyway. There were probably spells that read auras crudely enough to fool, but for his aura sight... well, with all of the continual change it would be like trying to forge a sunset - too big and too much in motion, reacting to everything around it...

There was just no way.

You might just as well try to sneak across a road during rush hour traffic carrying a potted shrub for concealment. It just wasn't going to work.

And Willow loved him, but so did Amy.

The boy often wondered if life was meant to be so hard.

Talk about 'wearing your heart on your sleeve' not one of the three of them could keep any secrets from the others on this issue, as each one could see in the auras of the others what they really felt. Willow loved Xander with an affection unspeakable, Xander just didn't have any clue how to quantify a love so big that it influenced each and every part of her being and went so deep into her core.

It was humbling just to look at it, and deep inside his soul responded, wanting to love her back just as much, if only to feel worthy of the love he'd already gotten by returning it to her.

Amy's affection for him was not so big, but it was growing fast. Frankly, he had only just figured out that he loved Willow, so his love for his oldest friend was still developing in a romantic sense. And, as humbling as it was to admit to this, Amy actually loved him more than he loved Willow in that sense.

That didn't mean that he loved Willow any less than he did. Xander merely had to consider that, as good as he felt toward her, he could see the evidence as well as any one of their group, and Amy had greater romantic affection for him than so far he had managed to develop toward his redhaired best friend. That was something he had to consider when it came time to stomp all over those feelings by excluding her or being cold towards the blonde.

What was troubling was that soul-deep reaction of guilt over not returning a love already given, and that same humbling sensation and desire to love her back just to be deserving of her love already given to him.

Complicating this yet further were those small bursts of jealousy Willow got when Xander's guard faltered and he allowed himself to feel a tiny bit of love for Amy. But, on the other hand, Amy felt no guilt or jealousy at all over it when he nurtured his love for Willow, and that very lack of selfishness was causing Willow to feel a little guilty over her own jealousy.

The trio of teens were, in fact, on a standard roller coaster of adolescent angst, only with two important differences. One was the very standard set of misunderstandings, false starts and blind reactions were all missing due to the simple fact that none of them had to say anything, and there could be no lies among them in regards to their feelings.

That also caused the second difference from the standard teen romance, in that everything was happening at a very highly accelerated pace, because they DIDN'T have to say anything, go through those misunderstandings, blind reactions, and so on, just watch each other's auras to figure out what was going on from that.

Willow was already starting to feel guilt over the hurt Amy felt over the snubs she got from Xander who was only trying to be loyal to her.

Jesse was, of course, heckling in the background, speaking as though into a microphone. "Yes, Jim, here on 'The Mating Habits of the American Teenager' we take you now to an unusual phenomena, where, in this episode, we see a young man in love with two young ladies, each of whom loves him desperately. This particular triangle will start with the young Willow, who has discovered because of aura sight that there's no way she could hide her feelings from her lifelong crush successfully any longer, and without his fear of turning into his father, he has no reason not to go for her in turn. However, a rival has appeared for his affections and already loves him desperately, too much, in fact, for the young couple to ignore. Her pain causes them pain, for her unselfishness in wishing them happy has already caused both to regard her as a trusted friend. Will they break the moral dilemma through the simple yet heartless expedient of rejecting one of the few to ever show any kindness towards them at all? Or will the young lovers reject the harsh yet accepted methods of resolution and embrace the unconventional, the untried, new and dangerous to them by daring to permit her into their lives? Only time will tell what heartache could lie ahead as their lives are made or broken. Now, back to you, in the studio, Jim."

Despite the truly excellent 'Monty Python Announcer' voice he used, nothing could save Jesse at that point from a fairly pronounced assault of pranking cantrips.

"So! Jesse," Xander taunted, once the prank-fest was over and people had stopped making involuntary bodily noises, and they'd pulled into a restaurant to eat. "How was it like, getting to spend all day with your future bride?"

"Yes, Jesse," Willow focused on her other male friend as they all took their seats inside. "Tell us all about the future Mrs. McNally!"

The weird part was, nobody felt Willow was kidding.

Seeing that, Jesse did some quick backpedaling. "Throw myself in front of a girl who has always treated me like garbage? No. I don't think so. If Cordelia wants me, she gets to do the apologizing deal, and then maybe I'll think about her once she gets a total personality transplant. Not before. Besides, I think she'd be more interested in Xander's millions."

"Well, ANY millions to be perfectly honest," Xander allowed. "I don't think she cares much who they come attached to. Just like the black widow spider her face so resembles, she'd be perfectly glad to consume just about any guy... so long as he was filthy rich."

"The one thing you could guarantee, he wouldn't be by the time she left him!" Amy laughed along with all the rest.

"No, really Jesse!" Willow earnestly pressed. "Who are you going to get together with if not Cordelia?"

Xander sat up straighter, checking around his friends with a quick glance. "Hey, you know it might be worth a million or two to get her eyes off me? I could just give them to Jesse, and let Cordy get her claws in him!"

"Aw, I dunno." Jesse dodged. "A few million dollars, to date Cordelia? I don't think that's worth it. She's just not as sparkly as she used to be, y'know?"

In truth, having only just spent a very traumatizing day with the former girl of his dreams, Jesse was feeling very disillusioned. It wasn't that he'd never spent any time together before, they'd been cursed by her vicious tongue since kindergarten growing up in the same small-town school system with her. But everything looked different in light of their new confidence.

"But if not her, then who?" Willow pressed, and by her pressure turned the entire joke discussion serious.

"What? The newly popular, buff and car owning me?" Jesse returned, still-dodging but semi-serious, then waved his straw to indicate them. "I bet I could date any girl I wanted. Present company excluded, of course."

"Well, then you'll be wanting to win this back." Xander waved a dollar, before placing it on the table and staring at the door. "C'mon, first girl our age who comes in through that door."

"Alright. You're on," his buddy grinned.

They waited in tense silence for a number of minutes until the number for their burgers was called. Jesse was about to stand up and go get them, but Xander darted up faster, eyes on the restaurant door. "Nope! I'll get it. You, my friend, are on."

As Xander darted away to pick up their food, Jesse's gaze swiveled back to the door, and he groaned. A plain-faced girl their age was ushering in a couple of grade school kids.

"Good luck," Willow whispered, face down, hiding a smile.

"Go get 'em, Tiger," Amy shooed him off.

Rolling his eyes, Jesse sprang off to intercept his target.

"What did I miss?" Xander returned with a tray a few minutes later, passing out drinks and foil wrapped hamburgers.

Willow was nodding, eyes on the distant teens secure in a different corner of the restaurant. "Nothing much to report yet."

"Just a total lack of crash and burn," Amy added.

The trio watched in silence Jesse hang out with the strange girl, until the grade school kids she escorted began speeding to the outside door. Then their friend made a detour over to the Scoobies table.

"Her name is Marcie Ross," Jesse grabbed a few fries, and spoke around them. "She is babysitting for the day for a neighbor of hers - earning more than we do at your uncle's, Xander. I might have to get in on the babysitting business if it really pays as well as she says. She's taken the job to afford a flute, as she'll be taking band next year."

"What year is she?" Amy asked.

"Freshman, just like us." Jesse grabbed his untouched burger and shake, stuffing the burger and fries he'd ordered into pockets of his jacket, then stood back up. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a walk in the park watching over two little rug rats I really ought to be attending to."

Meeting Xander's gaze, eyes twinkling, Jesse grabbed the dollar off of their table before departing to go rejoin Marcie, who'd waited for him at the door.

"Get a kiss or you're giving that back!" Xander called softly after him.

Jesse shot him a thumbs up before taking Marcie's hand and leaving.

I O I O I

They all wanted to be trying out that Ancestor Guide spell as soon as they possibly could. However, it also seemed wise to make the best use they could out of the opportunity, and absorb some extra books at the same time.

So Jesse, having won the toss (and some suspected that he'd developed a cantrip for controlling coin tosses, as he'd been winning a lot of those lately) got to be next up for a hypno-learning session.

As before, Willow would act the role of Mr. Mage Dude for him, seeing as how they hadn't had any problems doing it that way before (and really didn't want any surprises, like him declaring his undying love for the Pillsbury Doughboy or anything). So she'd waited at his house.

It was long after dark when he'd arrived.

"Jesse, what happened?" Willow cried out in alarm as she spotted him.

The boy touched a bruise on his face, coming away with blood from the cuts there. "Oh, nothing special, just a routine encounter with two vamps out to help themselves to an order of Children McNuggets, that's all."

"But... but we're not ready to go hunting yet!" she protested.

Jesse shrugged. "Oh, I wasn't hunting them. It was the other way around, believe me." He felt a tooth to see if it was loose.

"Did you get away?" she asked.

He grinned. "Oh, better than that! I staked 'em! Marcie was VERY grateful. I think I would be too. I'd hate to lose a job like hers. No going out after dark for the babies sat anymore, though. They're terrified."

Willow breathed a great big sigh of relief. "Well, I'm glad that ended well. And according to those books Xander's been typing, most people choose to forget encounters like that."

"Marcie won't," Jesse shook his head, grimacing as he felt the bruises under his arm. "I mean, maybe she would've if I hadn't been there. Two great big thugs rushing out of nowhere, then BAM! They're gone, and so are the kids. But after ten minutes of fighting, chasing, holding 'em off with a cross and finally staking them... no. She kept me out for a whole extra hour explaining all I knew about vampires."

"Is that going to cause problems?" the redhead asked in concerned tones.

"I don't see why it should," Jesse shrugged. "Ignorance is deadly in this town, and I'm not going to let anyone I like be that vulnerable. Marcie is cool, a social outcast like us, though not for lack of trying to fit in with the upscale crowd. But I think she's been held up by her inner nerd. She plays D&D and other stuff like we do. I think she's going to fit in just fine. She's already promised to take part of her flute money and sign up for our martial arts courses and so on with us. I think she'll fit in with us just fine."

"Well, it would be nice to have another friend." Willow was nodding agreeably.

Jesse shot her a measuring gaze, then shrugged. "Well, I gotta tell you, she's not like you or Amy. She's more of a tomboy. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I might've said that she was a better man than I am. Well, no, that's exaggerating."

"Exaggerating because it's not true, or that you weren't much of a man?" Willow teased, as they reached the door of his house together.

Whatever he might've answered was lost as the door swung open without the boy's touching it, and Jesse's mom stood there, radiating parental rage. "Jesse McNally," she tapped her foot. "What are you doing out so late with this... woman?"

"Oh, no! It's not like that!" Willow began waving her hands softly in defense.

Before either teen could move, the mother's hand had snaked out, grabbed her son's chin, and turned it to expose some lipstick to the harsh glare of the porch light. "Oh, it isn't, is it?"

They were drawn inside and the door slammed after the doomed teens.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Okay, show of hands. Who saw that coming? No one? I didn't think so. 


	13. Chapter 13

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Thirteen

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Feedback is the coin of the realm.

I O I O I

The problem with Willow-babble was that she never knew when to stop. With her new confidence, she did the babbling much less lately, but a sufficient shock could still set her off.

She'd had one.

It all started when Jesse's mom accused them of being too friendly and dragged them indoors for a good lecture on morality. Willow had pleaded innocent, and immediately (well, pretty early on during her babbling) pointed out, correctly, that Jesse's neck wasn't bathed in her shade of lipstick.

Things would have been fine if she had left it there.

She hadn't.

No, a Willow, once babbling, tends to not only cover the immediate subject in depth, but to expand down infinite rabbit-trails of all related topics trying to mount a truly universal defense, and before anyone knew it she had explained about the concepts of magic and what they were really intending to be up to that evening, and all about vampires and the hypnotism sessions.

At that point the kitchen door fell in under the combined weight of Jesse's four younger sisters, who'd all been leaning against it eavesdropping.

Now, if you tell one true statement (the color of lipstick not matching) and a great big load of lies (all that stuff about magic and vampires - lies from the perspective of people who didn't know about such unbelievable nonsense), the true one tends to get contaminated by association with the falsehoods. So, just as his mother was about to blow her top about the original "My son will not be out with loose women" tirade, Jesse felt it necessary to prove that magic, at least, was NOT a falsehood by any stretch of the imagination, and demonstrated with a few of those proof of concept spells, turning a kitchen counter pink, just like his mother had always wanted it, growing out his hair an extra four inches, levitating a pencil, and sundry other tricks.

All of this performed right before the amazed eyes of his gaggle of sisters.

After growing a flower for his mom, Jesse asked his dumbstruck parental unit, "NOW do you believe me?"

Jesse's mother, Jane McNally, stayed dumbstruck. However, his sisters were anything but! The teenager was swiftly swarmed with eager young would-be witches who wanted to know everything about what he'd just done, and how they could do it themselves, ESPECIALLY after Willow had demonstrated that makeup could be performed with magic.

Jesse was fourteen. And, for the longest time, his parents had been regular as a metronome, popping out extra siblings on the dot every two years. His next youngest sister, Judy, was twelve and just starting middle school this year (where the subject of makeup was a topic of eager conversation and experimentation among young girls), next up was Jennifer at ten, then Joan at eight, and finally little Jessica at six.

And, yes, as a family they'd gone a little crazy about J-names. His dad had been named Jason, and marrying a girl named Jane had given him the idea.

Be that as it may, once the cat was out of the bag all of the McNally sisters earnestly expressed their desires to become practical witches and do fun spells all on their own. Judy even promised that Jesse could take back the silver dollars that had been prized possessions since he was four - until he'd lost them to her in exchange for her secrecy about his porn stash.

Somehow the mention of skin mags brought their mother Jane out of her shell-shocked state and back down to Earth in parental concern. Jesse had to fess up about where his nudies mags were hidden so mom could throw them all away (and Judy would retrieve and return them, and the silver dollars, in a fit of contrition), and it was time for a serious conversation about vampires and the dangers that stalked Sunnydale at night.

Explanations began, but quickly bogged down.

Willow was, by that point, exhausted, and suggested, "How about we call in Xander? He's really the best one to explain."

Jane McNally was already well on her way back to being shocked to immobility, only this time in a totally different kind of parental concern, clutching her youngest daughter to her chest. "But, what I don't understand is... how do I keep my children safe? You say these things are out hunting every night?"

About to see a sundown curfew inflicted on him, as well as his whole family, Jesse was quick to speculate, "Let's ask Xander to bring by some anti-vamp weapons for school kids as well."

"And tell him to hurry coming up with one," Willow added under her breath, going for a phone.

I O I O I

It was about ten at night before Xander was able to come by, which was not all that late, considering that they'd only given him notice to come over to his friend's house half an hour before.

Luckily, to both Willow and Jesse's relief, Xander came in confidently through the door, bearing a stuffed duffel bag with him.

Jane received him with some trepidation, concern for her family clearly written in all of her features.

"The big problem is the vampires," Xander started without preamble, taking opportunity to set up in the middle of the living room. "They are the ones doing most of the killing around here. Now, most vampires are uncomplicated little souls, entirely devoted to the pursuits of death and pleasure, which to them are the same thing."

Jane had gone even paler.

"But to us, that's a good thing," Xander continued blithely. "Because dumb brutes are easily countered, and you don't get much dumber than your typical, everyday vamp."

He opened up his duffel and took out a bunch of jewelry cases, one of which he opened to reveal it showcased a silver cross on a necklace, and a matching pair of earrings inside. "This simple fashion statement guarantees you girls more safety than you could imagine. Wear these prominently and most vamps will be too uncomfortable looking at you to consider you fair game. There are easier fish to fry, and all that. Most vamps are lazy and go after the weakest prey they can find, which will no longer be you. Religious symbols on all of the buttons on your clothes is also a good idea."

Jane turned a startled look to the young Willow, seeing her Star of David necklace, earrings and bracelets in a new light for the first time.

"The Star of David is also a tremendously useful sign," Xander gladly added. "It consists of two triangles. The one pointing up represents man's efforts to reach God. The one pointing down represents God reaching out to us. The beauty of the symbol is that both overlap, not just at the tips, but all over. Since God never gives up on us, the meaning is clear, that so long as we are reaching out towards him, we make contact. Truly a beautiful symbol."

Jesse's mom and sisters all blinked in surprise, having never had that explained to them before. They'd thought it was just a Jewish thing.

To that, Xander tossed out a shrug. "At first the Romans didn't persecute any Christians, seeing them as just an offshoot of the Jewish faith, which was authorized for practice in their Empire. And, in that, they were more correct than most modern views. We truly aren't all that much separate in our faiths - the Jews still believe in a Messiah, they just don't believe he's come yet. About the only difference in the fundamental roots of our religions is that Christianity says he already has. Other than that, we share most things in common. But where was I?"

"Oh yes!" Xander exclaimed, reaching for another article out of his bag, which he then held up proudly. "Religious symbol jewelry is perfect for a passive, always-on defense. For moments when you need a little more oomph - Tadaah!" He presented what looked like a small firework. "Garlic scented stinkbombs using essential oil of garlic - which is more garlic than garlic as far as potency. I mean, the bulbs only stink so much, even when pressed. It's the oil within them that carries the real payload of power as far as pungent aromas are concerned. You stick a clove of garlic in some vampire's face and he's going to recoil, but waft about some of the essential oil and you could knock him over at fifty paces. That stuff is pungent! And a stinkbomb loaded with it ought to clear a wide area. Certainly wide enough to make just about any kind of escape you might be thinking of, regardless of numbers of the opposing vamps."

Jane McNally was looking considerably less pale after the friends of her son had revealed these tools, and she plucked up noticeably. "Xander, I thank you for the efforts you've obviously gone into, but I was the wife of a marine lieutenant. I've heard enough old war stories and combat jargon spouted off to know that no defense is ever perfect."

"No. They are not," Xander agreed, before reaching into his duffel once more to pull out a third implement, which he held shielded by his body for a moment while he continued talking. "No defense is perfect, and the best way to make the evil baddies leave you alone is to threaten their existence, which jewelry and garlic won't do."

Willow and Jesse sat listening mildly as their friend spouted a truly maniacal grin. "But! To create a fully automatic pencil launcher is surprisingly easy. All you have to do is obtain a small motor to spin a small wheel, against which you place another wheel that has no motor and thus spins freely. Anything put between those wheels gets launched in the direction of the spin. So all you really need to add at that point is a hopper full of sharp pencils and a chute to serve as a feed mechanism to supply a steady stream of pencils to the drive wheels. The force of your motor is important, however, as it has to be strong enough to propel the pencils a sufficient distance for safety, while still arriving with the energy needed to penetrate the vampire's chest cavity. So you'll want a very high speed motor. Accuracy is good to have as well, but most of that comes from choosing a good set of wheels that can stay stable at speed and impart sufficient energy to your pencils without wobbling. After that, the only complication is a trigger mechanism so you can activate or turn off the flow of pencils according to your need. Conceal the whole thing in an average lunchbox and you're golden. Replace the eraser with a simple incendiary and you don't even have to kill via a stake wound to the heart. They burn to death because the stake stuck in them is burning."

Xander placed such a lunchbox on the table before them, and popped open the lid of the Mickey Mouse container to show the hopper and feed mechanism of the weapon within, already filled with sharp pencils.

"So, flying, flaming stakes of doom?" Jesse snarked, while Willow giggled.

"Exactly!" Xander agreed energetically. "Stakes to the heart and fire are the two easiest methods for disposing of pesky vampires. Also, we're going to add stabilizer fins to the pencils as soon as possible. Short wings that spring out after launching, to help it get a little extra range and fly straighter, like a cruise missile."

"Wait. I see where this is going." Jesse grinned.

"And, like a crossbeam on a sword," Xander continued, "it should stop our pencils from stabbing straight through any undead bodies they hit. That's a problem they have with bullets, the things are flying so fast they go all of the way through, which is fine for killing people, but the undead are highly tolerant of flying pieces of lead. It comes from having zero functioning internal organs to penetrate."

Willow was blinking. "But one long, thin centerpiece, and two short rods coming out on either side - you're planning to shoot them with crosses, aren't you?"

"Flaming crosses, thank you very much." Xander smiled "I thought it would be more effective. Most things you can do to undead just annoy them. But our stake launcher..."

"Armed with the amazing flying, flaming crosses of doom." Jesse snarked.

"Yes, armed with the amazing flying, flaming crosses of doom, should be more than enough to finish off your average vampire swarm. And, like I said before, you can hide the whole thing in a gradeschooler's lunch pail." Xander bowed, and with a wave of his arm presented Jesse's sisters, most of whom were gradeschoolers.

Jesse's mom was blinking, surprised at their inventiveness. "Which is fine for carrying a concealed anti-vampire weapon, but where are they going to keep their lunches?"

I O I O I

"I thought that was really very clever," Willow told Xander, as the two went to brush their teeth. Jesse's mom, knowing about the dangers out there now, had asked them to stay over instead of walk home during the night. Joan and Jessica, the two youngest McNally daughters, would be sharing a room with Willow for the night, while Xander would be bunking with Jesse.

"Some part of me wishes that I'd come up with a purely mechanical solution to her problems," Xander admitted, then grinned. "But most of me likes the way they worked out better."

In order to get around Mrs. McNally's objection he'd been forced to adapt the lunchbox weapon using a couple of spells. For one, he'd never come up with a good way to actually light the incendiary eraser replacements, so he'd put a spell on it from that weapon enchantment book to cause all the pencils that it launched to burst into flame magically, instead of technologically.

That did save costs of time and money getting and affixing those incendiaries he'd planned on using. Also, his plans for carefully carved popsicle sticks for wings, along with some nebulous ideas for getting them held down by rubber bands that'd spring off and allow them to unfurl on firing, had to be canned as beyond their present technical capacity, especially in numbers. So that system, too, had been put in place via magic. A small transformative cantrip stored in a cheap jewel just inside the firing port would supply the change.

That jewel would have to be charged up daily. Throckmorton's Codex hadn't covered permanent magic of any sort, so the girls would be forced to fill up the magical gas tank of the jewel each morning before they went out, which meant magical training, and all of them were ecstatic about that.

But the last change was that they wouldn't be using lunchboxes. Xander had been convinced to use the spell Mr. Mage Dude had employed to pull a large book out of a small pocket to build the entire stake launcher into an ordinary looking pencil case.

"Hey! No argument there, man!" Jesse agreed, taking out his own pencil case that he'd been turning around in his hands. "These things are awesome! No more late night beatings for me! I've got a stake launching machinegun that burns vampires down like mad!"

They all did. Xander had been presented with enough pencil cases to make a version of this weapon for each of the Scoobies, and the McNally family. In the morning Jesse's mom was going out to a stationary supply store to pick up a few bulk boxes of pencils, as the weapons loaded a few thousand each in their dimensionally expanded hoppers.

Although they looked perfectly normal if you opened them.

"It is genius, Xander. They are perfect anti-vampire weapons!" Willow enthused, reaching for her toothbrush.

"And that is where I am torn," the dark haired teen admitted, sighing before he met the astonished glances of his two friends. "They are perfect vampire destroying devices. If you can aim a hose, you can squirt a stream of flying, flaming crosses at vampires no problem. Even the six year old, Jessica, can do that to stake them. But that IS the problem! You recall what Van Hellsing wrote about the Slayer?"

"No," Willow was shaking her head. "We don't know what Van Hellsing wrote about the Slayer. You haven't finished typing that book yet."

"Oh," Xander grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Well, anyway, the Slayer legend is that 'one girl in all the world' junk to stand against the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness. And that's our problem. I don't want Jesse given a sundown curfew for eternity, so I want his mom to think all is well. But it isn't. These are only good enough against vampires, not the demons or forces of darkness. Two out of three aren't covered. And if his family thinks they are safe, but aren't, that's a problem. But at the same time, I don't want my friend stuck inside all night for the rest of his life if his mom gets a wiff of them NOT being safe!"

"Well, you DID tell the truth about vampires being the most common of the forces of evil around here," Willow cuddled up against him, squirting a gob of paste on her brush bristles.

"Help me out with some phrasing here," Jesse butted in. "You said vampires, demons, AND the forces of darkness? Well, what else is there after demons and vampires? Aren't they plenty dark enough?"

"My guess is that he was referring to wicked priests, evil sorcerers, and all of the human forms of darkness like that," Xander gave off a casual shrug.

Jesse considered that a moment, before reaching for his own toothbrush. "Okay, I guess that's possible."

"So," Jesse reached for the toothpaste. "How soon can we get Marcie one of the new Scoobie Certified Stake Machineguns?"

"Huh?" Xander turned to face his friend, forced to rely on questioning faces as his mouth was already full of foam.

"Oh, that's right. He didn't tell you that," Willow wiped off her own mouth, having only just finished washing it out. "He told Marcie about the nightlife after they got attacked out with the neighbor kids tonight."

"Told her everything." Jesse shrugged. "Expect her at martial arts classes."

Xander considered this, then spat out and washed his mouth. Wiping off the outside, he shrugged, "Not a problem! I'll get one ready to give her in the morning."

"Right!" Then the trio of teens separated for bed, only to run into Jesse's mother, who'd been leaning up against a wall right outside the open door of the bathroom they'd been discussing this in.

Stopping as if they'd hit a wall, the trio waited for Jane McNally to stand and stare down at them all over her crossed arms a moment.

Then she sighed.

Closing her eyes, and rubbing her forehead, Jesse's mother leaned back on her wall and shook her head a moment. "Jesse..." she started, then trailed off. Pausing a moment, she continued, eyes still closed. "I married a marine. I know how pointless it is to convince a good man to give up on a 'good fight'. I was just hoping you'd be a normal teenager before you went raring off to go fight for liberty or justice or something."

She paused again, and the three teenagers said nothing.

Sighing heavily once again, Jane opened her eyes to look on her son and his friends with the utmost seriousness. "Okay, here is the deal. As your father used to say: A soldier without training is just a walking casualty waiting to happen. You, young man, will see to it that you acquire the best instruction available for what you are about to be doing."

The mother hoped that would put them off by a good few years, and her heart sunk deep within her chest when the trio of young teens began to bubble over in their rush to explain all they'd been doing to get ready.

Seated on a couch a half hour later as they finished their summary of what martial arts classes they'd been taking, how they'd been practicing, what spells they'd been using to get more out of that, the Ape charms, and all of what they'd been learning through hypnotism, Jane waved them all to silence.

"Okay, okay. I can see you're doing all you can, and quite frankly you've impressed me," which, the mother did not let on about how much that depressed her. She'd been hoping by insisting on training she'd be gaining more time. But they'd already been ahead of her on that one.

She sighed again, putting her hands on her knees and acquiring a wan smile, looking over the decorative half-wall behind them that separated the living room, where they'd been talking, and the hallway leading to the bedrooms where Jesse's sisters had all hung out, eavesdropping on them again.

On seeing their mother spot them, the girls ducked back from peeking around the wall again.

Seeing that somehow gave the mother more confidence.

"Very well," she stated. "I admit I am a little envious of how rapidly you're learning. And you are right about the schoolwork. You could skip grades easily progressing the way you are, and good scholarships are almost a certainty for all of you. Seeing as how I don't make much as a secretary, that's your best chance for getting into college. But I don't want you to get selfish. Your sisters need this every bit as much as you do. I want them to have the same downloads of their schoolbooks as you are doing for yourselves."

Jane smiled at the stunned teens, and her daughters shocked yet delighted faces poking around the half-wall again. "That way if they should grow up to marry soldiers who died in helicopter crashes they won't be forced to raise their children on a mixture of food stamps and a secretarial salary. For that matter, I want to start memorizing a few law books this way myself. Anyone can be a lawyer, they just have to pass the State Bar exam. The easiest way to prepare yourself to pass is to go to a law school, but anyone can apply to take the test. Seeing as how I already work at a law firm, if I could pass my Bar, our income should rise noticeably, helping us all out enormously."

"No problem, mom," Jesse stated with a wide grin.

"I wasn't finished," Jane McNally stated firmly. "This magic sounds terribly useful, and since you brought up demons aren't held back by garlic or killed by stakes, I think we all ought to take up your martial arts regime as well. But Jesse, neither myself nor your sisters are EVER going to be involved in your fights, not even as backup! Do you understand me? We are learning this strictly as a form of self-defense, nothing more. We aren't ever going to be 'called up' as your reserves or anything. Do I make myself clear?"

She stared at him with forcible conviction visible in her eyes, and her son and his friends all nodded attentively.

Good. They'd hadn't caught her wavering feelings.

In truth, the mother of five was severely torn. On one hand, she wanted to forbid any one of her children from ever leaving her doors again, but knew that was impossible. On another, she wanted her husband back so he could call in a marine regiment to smack down everything non-human in a five-hundred mile radius, and keep it down forever.

And yet, Xander had already described how the official authorities were already in on the secret, and at least passively helping it along. So she knew that last was impossible.

She'd already had to comfort neighbors and friends over the losses of their children to wild animal attacks or 'gangs on PCP'. She knew what was going on had already struck close to home, and SOMEBODY had to do something!

But she didn't want that someone to be her own little boy. Already she was torn between wanting to go out to rescue him if he got into trouble, or keep the rest of her precious family safe.

The woman started crying, looking at them, thinking this was what came from marrying soldiers - seeing your children go off to war. But he'd get in more trouble, and in deeper over his head, if he thought he could call on her to get him out, and Jane was neither going to risk leaving the rest of her family complete orphans, nor was she about to commit a gaggle of pre-teen girls to battle.

In fact, she resolved to tell him that, right there.

"Jesse... and Xander, and you too Willow," she eyed them firmly, as only a mother ought. "I cannot afford to risk leaving my family without any parent at all, to get split up by social services and farmed out to a dozen or more foster homes."

"But," Willow babbled, "there's only six of you..?"

Jane sighed once again. It was a night for that, it seemed. "And foster care is notorious for bouncing children around from home to home. They never seem to stay in one place for very long. It is a horrible arrangement, but all you have to do is look at any DMV to know how government handles things. If I die trying to save you, your sisters may never see each other again as they vanish into the maw of public welfare. Now, may I continue?"

She got several earnest and slightly frightened nods.

"Good," she had to suppress a grin at how easily this was going. "Now I may be old fashioned, but I believe that women have no place in combat. Willow, I know I can do nothing about stopping you, but my daughters and I are not going to participate. I won't be responsible for sending a girl barely out of kindergarten into a war zone, intended to be a soldier. Is that clear?"

More nods. Very good.

Jane gave her own very grave nod. "Now, frankly I would forbid you too, Jesse. I don't feel fourteen year olds should be put into combat any more than girls. But if the situation truly is as you say, something that I want to personally verify, this appears to be one of those cases of you either die fighting, or die not fighting. We are already in a war zone, and something has to hold the enemy back for anyone to have any safety at all."

She gave a very wan and tired smile. "Your father was always very big on tactics, and so I know that if someone is hunting these vampires, so that some of the time they get destroyed, then the vampires have to be more careful ALL of the time they go out; which means they can't just rush out and do as they like, so there will be fewer human casualties overall. So on that point I must concede. Someone must do something, and as you said, you three appear to be the only ones trying to do anything at all."

She pieced them with earnestly pleading looks. "But I must insist on you being careful. Make plans, prepare, make backup plans and plot your areas. Find out where the churches are: you said no vampires or demons could step on holy ground, so memorize a town map with all of the ground that qualifies highlighted, so you'll always know where the nearest safety lies. As your father said, always plan a good retreat, because you'll never be able to guarantee you'll always have the upper hand."

"That's a good idea," the teens eyes had widened in appreciation of that nugget of sound tactical information.

Jane dropped her face in her palms and began moaning. "Oh! If only you could get tanks and aircraft in on this little war of yours!"

Jesse perked up. "Hey! Mom, I still have that radio control model plane I got for my last birthday! How about we set that up, mount a stake machinegun under each wing, and use it for strafing vampires?"

"I've got a 57 Chevy," Xander mused aloud. "That's as close to a tank as a car ever gets. If we put in a sunroof I could mount a pintel for a crew served weapon up there. That's not quite a tank, but it's close."

"We could even use gasoline to set some house fires during the day, and burn out vampire nests that way," Willow eagerly participated. "So long as we block sewer access, so they can't get out, we can trap vampires inside of burning buildings that way."

Jesse was thinking, tapping his chin, "You know, if we could get a priest to bless the holding tanks of the firetrucks, when they arrive to put out those fires they'd start out by spraying a few hundred gallons of holy water onto those inside."

"We've got good intel right now," Xander mused. "The ghosts of my ancestors told me about all of the current vampire and demons nests about town. If we plan this out right, we could neutralize a majority of them in one combined strike."

"So long as you can do it without risk to yourselves, I would very much like to live in a much safer town," Jesse's mother agreed.

"We could even buy a few model airplanes, and let your sisters control them from the safety of their home," Willow told Jesse brightly. "So long as they had a camera, or something, to see what they were doing."

"I like it," Jesse nodded. "The combined arms approach to killing vampires. Air support for the ground units, covering our backs without putting my sisters in any danger."

"On that I could agree," his mother acquiesced.

"So, it's war," Xander agreed with a grin.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

I always thought there were more efficient, and safer, ways to hunt vampires than to wander around at night waiting for them to attack you - and it was stated in the beginning as Xander's goal to kill ALL the vampires.

Those books taught him to think as a general, after all.

But, as you all know, even if they kill all of the vampires in Sunnydale, being the Hellmouth, it will only attract more. 


	14. Chapter 14

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Fourteen

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Feedback is the coin of the realm.

I O I O I

"You know," Willow postulated, "if you change the incendiary just a little, and keep the metal housing of the eraser to direct the blast, then we could have the rocket assisted flying flaming crosses of doom."

"Ah, but Willow, I am not a rocket scientist. Well, not yet anyway," Xander demurred, as they all assembled for their morning martial art classes.

Jesse was grinning. "Oh? But think of it this way: I've still got the fireworks I saved from the 4th of July, including some bottle rockets a cousin sent up out of Mexico. Take one of those apart to learn about the insides, do a few chemical tests to identify the ingredients, and we've got our rocket assist."

"That should add a few hundred feet to our range, and a great deal of force on impact," Amy pondered, before grinning in agreement. "And extra speed so they'd be harder for vampires to dodge."

"So, the amazing rocket assisted flying, flaming crosses of doom?" Xander asked. "I like it. But at the forces we're talking about, it becomes no more a simple pencil sprayer. We could be damaging walls and windows and stuff on our missed shots. That leaves too much evidence for my liking."

"So, give yourself a selector switch," Jesse confidently waved down the objection. "One setting with rocket assist, one without. That way if your life is in danger, you can have the extra force and power, without doing property damage those times you don't need to."

The orphaned young Mr. Harris conceded the point. "Okay, so my question becomes, what project am I going to put on hold to get some free time to use to learn how to copy your bottle rockets?"

"Hmm," everybody had to agree he had a point. They were all pretty much swamped with all of the work that had to be done getting ready.

"Well, our mornings are spent in training, and afternoons working at Rory's. How about evenings?" Jesse suggested.

"Nuh uh, not happening. All work and no play makes Xander a dull boy," Xander disagreed, then stopped himself. "Where did that bit of proverbial wisdom come from, anyway?"

"We can fit loads of small projects in the corners. The trouble is, there's no way a research project of this magnitude is going to be small," Amy got them back on the topic at hand.

"Actually, it could be!!" Willow hopped up brightly. "I could do some searching on my computer. There's got to be some firework company that has some plans online! They do work with overseas contractors, after all, so they've got to be able to download recipes to make proposed changes so they can upload them and do the whole testing and bartering deal!"

The Xand-man gave his Willow a hug. "That's my girl!" he exulted. "And it makes no difference if they're all encrypted and behind firewalls, my little genius here can find holes in their security somewhere!"

The girl hugged, though she enjoyed this greatly, gazed upon her boyfriend very seriously. "Actually, Xander, I think it's about time you helped me."

The entire group froze to look at her.

"I'm serious!" she gave Xander's chest a little shove. "I think it's time you leaned a little more towards Batman than relying solely on your ancestor's methods. We do live in a modern world, after all. Zorro didn't have to worry about computer databases tracking his movements, or finding records of a criminal's activities. The peasants just told him everything he needed to know, but that won't happen here! You've already learned how to type, and there were all those computer programming language books you memorized. And we've already learned that until you use it, it's not really yours."

The group's gazes switched from Willow to Xander in equal seriousness.

"Alright. How can I resist the plea of so lovely a lady?" the teen agreed after a short pause, bending over to kiss Willow's knuckle as he acquiesced. "But do you, by any chance, have any hacking primers I could be studying?"

"Tons," she told him with a relieved smile.

"Then it's a date," he told her in return. "Tonight, you stay over at my place to assist me in memorizing those. I was about due for another session in any case, having already thoroughly absorbed my last one. And if we can get our hands on any books about rocketry, that too could be of benefit."

"Actually, Xander, I can't." She shrank. "My parents are going to be back tonight, and they expect me to spend some time with them."

Jesse whistled. "Twice in the same month? I wonder what's triggered the homing instincts of those little pigeons. They're never home this often."

"Family troubles again." Willow sighed. "My cousins are giving them a hard time about where they live again."

Amy blinked twice. "Well, I can't say I blame them. This town isn't exactly a safe place to live. Do you think your extended family could be in on the secret?"

Willow started shaking her head. "Hardly. They're some of the most mundane and boring people you'd ever meet. They don't even have any hobbies!"

Well, more like the hobbies they had were all about magic, and so they could not talk about them because of her parents insistence on her ignorance. So, in an odd sort of dichotomy, they couldn't talk about the magic in their lives with Willow, and she couldn't talk about the magic in her life with them, so even though they both shared many interests, each thought the other was ignorant and didn't want to broach the secret, so felt the other was boring.

Life was odd like that sometimes.

"Do you plan to tell your parents?" Amy inquired.

Willow shook her head fiercely, but it was left to Jesse to laugh and explain. "Not likely! They got angry when she got all excited over the movie Cinderella when she was a preschooler, and wanted a fairy godmother of her own. They cut off her allowance for a week, and banned Disney movies from the house."

"Weird." Amy rolled her eyes.

"Besides, it's not like they ever stay long enough to be in any real danger." Willow supplied. "They always fly in and out during daylight anyway. Both my folks hate to miss sleep for travel."

"Which in this case is a happy accident," Xander hugged his girl again, without any idea that Ira and Sheila's daylight travel plans to and from Sunnydale had nothing accidental about them. "So no prob, we can put it off a day."

"Actually," Amy saw an opportunity and leapt for it, "So long as Willow is ok about it, I could play Mr. Mage Dude for you tonight. All it is is telling you to read some books, after all. You've already conquered your personal demons."

Willow looked doubtful, so Amy rushed ahead to sweeten the deal. "And I'm sure I could get my mom to donate some spells from her book! Wouldn't you like to have a familiar, like she does?"

The whole group paused and looked thoughtful.

"I don't know about cats." Xander pondered. "Sure, they're useful. But if you could get something like an owl: nocturnal, even more silent than a cat, and able to scout around town at night, all night, every night... that could give us priceless recon info about emerging vamp patterns."

Jesse was nodding along with him. "We'd know what to hit, where to hit it, and how to make it hurt the most along with the least risk to ourselves. That sounds priceless. About the only thing our stake machineguns won't do is find any vamps to hose. And after we hit the major nests, if any more do come to town, nocturnal aerial overwatch would be the way to catch them."

Seeing developing hurt in Amy's aura, as Amy watched her own developing urge to turn her down anyway, Willow gave in to the sympathy she'd been building for the girl and agreed despite her better judgment, "Ok." Seeing the triumph bloom inside of Amy's aura, Willow backpedaled instantly. "But have your mom do it, as she already knows those spells."

Xander shrugged. "Okay. I guess I'll be staying over at your place tonight, Amy. Perhaps your mom could play Mr. Mage Dude for both of us?"

"Sounds like a plan." Amy beamed.

Jesse went ahead adding his own agreement, unknowingly trumping Willow's burst of sudden concern over this. "Hey, yeah! That way Cathy can do the whole 'overload you to death' thing, and you can cast that Ancestor Guide spell right after! I don't mind missing a turn, as I'll be playing Mr. Mage Dude for my own family tonight anyway. So a light session for Xander, and a brain overload for Amy... that'll give us two junior hackers to help Willow!"

"Great!" everyone agreed, even Willow, who had a bad feeling about this.

But they had enough doubts and small hesitations about aspects of various things often enough that no one noticed this in her aura. They weren't mind readers, after all. Love and other obvious things were consistent enough for them to have learned how to recognize.

Minor premonitions were not.

I O I O I

The loadout for the McNally family was not what the rest of the Scoobies had received. On the whole, they were getting just schoolbooks, the Xander-Dex, the Ars Memoriae scroll upon so much else depended, and a minor mental health quote. Judy had prevailed upon her mother to let them get the Girl Scout manuals memorized, but the McNally matriarch had deliberately held them back from any of the tactics, martial arts, or survival manuals that the Scoobies considered standard.

She felt there would be time enough for those later (when they were in their twenties if she could arrange for them to wait that long). But Jane did not want any of her girls to feel tempted by new knowledge into joining the fight on the ground, or start thinking like soldiers.

She'd seen the change in Xander. Despite not knowing what she'd witnessed at the time, she'd seen him go from a goofy kid to a serious soldier, and did not want that for any of her family.

For Jesse that desire came too late. But for her daughters it was not.

The sole exception she made for the standard Scooby loadout was to allow the inclusion of the chart of major and minor chakras, so they could learn to open their inner eyes, and thus have a vital early warning system to identify demons, vampires and other dangerous nonhuman entities before they could strike. Because, as any rabbit could tell you, sensing a wolf before it came in range to prove it was the superior fighter was the whole point.

On the other hand, even more was being contributed to the upgrade with Amy and Xander than had previously been planned. Marcie overheard them as she joined up for Tae Kwon Do, and immediately involved herself when she learned this was going on, not only getting herself a slot in the group upgrade going on that night, but added something special to it.

Marcie was an aspiring musician. She wanted to be good at it, and didn't know if she had any ancestors who'd be helping her out with that. So she wanted to make sure she could do her best on her own.

So, on her suggestion, that entire party had moved over to Xander's house where he had two very high end pianos, freshly tuned by experts with very expensive and accurate tools.

Her idea was this: Their hypnotic memorization sessions did things beyond what the conscious mind was capable of. So, if the person playing Mr. Mage Dude were to hit the piano keys, a few tuning forks, or whatever, and tell you to memorize this one as C sharp, and this one as G, or better yet go right down the whole set of notes in all of the keys, you could in theory become a person with perfect pitch, the ability to identify tones at will.

Very valuable for a musical career.

Sometimes it was all that was required. There are true stories of kids just going up to musical instruments for the first time and playing songs they'd heard. It was a huge step forward. Like being massively strong was an edge in most sports, it was one of those little advantages that put you head and shoulders above those that didn't have it, in those areas where it mattered.

And, seeing as how the person playing Mr. Mage Dude could ask the subject of those sessions to do things an ordinary conscious mind found very difficult or that normally took years of careful instruction, like opening a brow chakra to see auras, after those tones had been memorized, he could ask a subject to sing a specific note without external reference.

Or all of them, then do it again. Then, like the chakra, learn how to do it at will, so they could do it anytime they liked.

Marcie then had them go the extra mile by having their Mr. Mage Dude go an extra step further, having the subject do things like identify all of the notes in a chord or other tonal mass, name pitches of everyday noises like car horns, and memorize a set of audio tapes Marcie'd cherished but never really managed to learn properly, teaching a person a peculiar trick used by Tibetan monks who sang chords.

Of such gifts are great musicians made.

There are different levels of perfect pitch, and this would put them at the top end of things, having a more valuable gift than most, even among the fairly rare persons who had it at all.

That, plus instructions on how to read music (which they also included) and a fairly trivial bit of instruction on how to use the instruments, and they were ready to be real musical prodigies, provided a spot of practice (which High School Band could give them, a class they were now all resolved to take).

Of course, in their typical style, they couldn't leave it there.

Top musicians earn figures comparable to top sports figures, and don't get hit over the head by balls or other players doing it. And while none of them were quite sure as yet what they wanted for careers, there were other benefits to music besides making yourself a whole lot of money. For one it was a whole lot of fun, and for another, it had many romantic possibilities.

Even Willow was not immune to the hotness factor of musicians, and once the topic was brought up, felt very eager for Xander to be an accomplished one; dreams of romantic, musical moments already flitting through her mind.

Xander had some musical ability. Don Diego had been an indifferent player of the mandolin, nothing really out of the ordinary for a young boy of his time and culture. He had heard great music, just never been able to duplicate it. But, as something he'd known, he'd just naturally passed that on to Xander.

That wasn't all the music Xander had learned during his dream life with the de la Vegas, as Esperanza, his many-times great grandmother and wife to Don Diego, had been an equally mediocre player of the harpsichord. Playing some instrument or other was just something you did back then, especially if you were high class, and even more especially if you lived a thousand miles from nowhere where you either made your own music or had none to listen to.

Xander, who had inherited by way of instruction those indifferent skills (on what were no longer common instruments for HIS time and place) wanted better musical abilities for himself just as much as Willow did.

Marcie came to the rescue there, having many ideas.

For the musical instruction, they collected what they had and decided what to do with it. His illustrious ancestors had passed on to Xander their mediocre mandolin and harpsichord skills. Of course, mediocre by the standards of a period when everyone played were ever so slightly advanced by the ones where practically no one did. But that still left substantial room to grow.

One of the many tortures Amy'd been forced to endure growing up had been taking violin lessons, which she'd detested, until her mother's will broke and she'd let her father teach Amy acoustic guitar, which the girl had liked much better. But those lessons had sadly come to an end with her parents divorce. Since one of the reasons she'd loved guitar was her father's lack of strict attention to details, letting her flail around on it doing whatever, the actual skill Amy had on both those instruments was beginner level at best.

Cathy herself had taken harp lessons as a girl, before abandoning that as soon as she could in favor of cheerleading and popularity. But they also had Marcie's books on beginning flute, which included how to finger all the holes. Rummaging around in Willow's attic also produced a clarinet, dating back to her mother's childhood, and back during better days the McNally family had taken piano, so they still had some books for that floating about.

Taken all together it wasn't much, wide ranging but not very deep, but still far better than nothing which was what they'd had before. There was also the fact that the beginning levels are by far the most discouraging ones to get through. Once passed that, you at least had some measure of return on your investment, so further study and practice often came much easier.

Catherine Madison, who would be performing Mr. Mage Dude duties for her daughter, Xander, and Marcie that night, learned all these good ideas from them at early morning martial art practice, then promptly took the day off from work, driving down to LA to rent a harpsichord, harp and mandolin, getting them all on a truck to be delivered to Xander's house that day so they'd be available for practice that evening. At the same time, she bought some beginning books on how to play clarinet, and for good measure picked up a trumpet, snare drum and instruction books for them at the same time.

Xander, having much the same idea, had picked up a beat up saxophone and a dented trombone out of a local pawn shop at the same time. But no drum sets were available in his rather limited price range, and he couldn't afford an electric guitar either. Too popular with the demons, he guessed. So any plans for being a boy rocker legend had to be put on hold.

Thankfully Amy still had the acoustic guitar her father had given her.

Thus supplied with instruments, the teens had taken the afternoon off of their regular car repairs, and spent it and their allowances, buying sheets of soundproofing material, which they then temporarily transformed to liquid via cantrips, and poured into the walls of Xander's home so they wouldn't disturb any neighbors playing loud instruments in the wee hours.

That night during the hypnotism session Cathy had her daughter Amy teach Xander what she knew of her instruments and vice versa, passed on what she knew of harp, then had them teach what they'd just learned to Marcie, who was also staying over to participate.

After that, it was a simple matter of having the hypnotized subjects read the instruction books, listen to a metronome to get a feel for the various time scales, handle the instruments, and play a few practice pieces in and among the rest of what they'd been doing. Thus hypnotized into doing it properly, they could even go through a few books of music in order to get a better feel for what they were doing that would hopefully carry over into their waking hours and establish a certain small level of skill.

So they learned mandolin and harpsichord, violin and acoustic guitar, harp, flute and clarinet, piano, snare drum, trumpet, saxophone and trombone to tolerable if not terribly proficient levels. At least what they played was recognizable as music, which was far beyond most beginners and more than they'd had any reason to expect for so little effort.

Their playing was, for the moment, fairly mechanical and soulless, but that was something they could improve on later.

That was a big part of what practice was for, after all. Luckily the Big Book of Sousa Marches they'd memorized used a good portion of their weird and wide assortment of strangely varied instrumental skills - At least half, which was quite an accomplishment, considering.

Some of the Mozart, Bach and Beethoven used most of the rest. Although, it must be admitted, there was not much call for mandolin these days. But the guitar was not something they'd have trouble finding music for. The trouble with that was Cathy'd raided her basement for the guitar music her husband left behind, and...

... there would be wails of agony once it was discovered by non-hypnotized students that Amy's father had been a country music fan.

I O I O I

Willow, who had been sleeping poorly out of nervousness, got woken up by the blaring of trumpets at Xander's house next door, fretted for a while over her nebulous fears, then dressed herself and snuck over despite the dark hour.

Catherine Madison was doing the program exactly as outlined. When she saw Willow she smiled and welcomed the young lady in, then offered to let her take some sleeping pills and participate in the same lessons Xander was undergoing so she wouldn't fall behind.

Feeling much relieved, the redhead took the older woman up on her offer, almost thankful that their attempt at soundproofing hadn't been perfect and that the trumpets had, muted though they'd been, been able to wake her.

Of course, once Cathy had the young lady asleep, then hypnotized as well, the temptation proved too much for the former cheerleader, so she included more than was strictly necessary in the advice column. Because controlling mothers, especially the well-intended ones, do not simply give up that trait overnight, and this was just too good an opportunity to resist!

"Willow," she whispered to the hypnotized young lady so named. "Do you feel Amy is your friend?"

"Yes," Willow reluctantly agreed. "But I'm scared that she wants to be close to Xander."

"Don't you feel the least bit guilty for excluding her?" the mother continued.

"Yes," the younger redhead agreed. "I feel very guilty sometimes."

"Do you want her to be happy?" the mother inquired.

"Yes."

"Do you want Xander to be happy?"

"Yes!" this time Willow spoke with enthusiasm.

"It makes Xander happy to help others be happy, doesn't it?" the mother asked coyly.

"Yes. That's part of what I love about him," the young lady agreed.

"Why does it scare you for Amy to be close to him?" the mother questioned.

"Because I don't want to lose him to her," Willow answered simply.

"Are you afraid Amy might steal him away?" the older redhead inquired.

"Yes," the hypnotized one whispered softly.

"How would you feel if she wasn't going to do that? What if sharing Xander between you kept him safer for both of you? The two of you could work together as friends and sisters to be more certain he wouldn't get away from either of you."

Willow blinked softly several times, before her face spread into a smile. "I'd like to feel more secure about Xander, and I'd always wanted a sister." Her hypnotized face became puzzled, speaking honestly and from the heart. "If we do work together I wouldn't have to be scared about Amy getting close to him, but... isn't that illegal?"

"A country where it is legal is only a plane ride away," Cathy smiled, knowing she'd won. "And marriages performed in other countries are legal here. But the USA also has millions of Muslims not-so-quietly performing polygamy right here, without even leaving to get married. Technically speaking, laws still make homosexuality illegal. That doesn't seem to be stopping anyone. So long as you are careful, why should it stop you?"

The young lady was silent as she absorbed this information. Finally she added "I guess it shouldn't."

"So how would you like to have a best friend, sister and confidant in Amy?" Cathy Madison asked of her subject.

"I'd like that very much," the hypnotized girl answered honestly.

"Consider it," Amy's mother commanded. "Because a life of demon hunting is far too dangerous to put off decisions like love for long. You don't want to miss out on opportunities by being too hesitant. And you don't want to feel guilty, or to make Xander or Amy miserable."

"That's right," Willow breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that she didn't want to do those things.

"And if you or Amy were to die, you'd want her children raised by a mother she'd chosen and helped train herself, wouldn't you? That would be the next best thing to being there yourself, wouldn't it?" the mother insinuated.

"Yes," Willow agreed, her doubts departing.

Cathy patted her fondly on the cheek. "I'll go have this talk with Xander and Amy. Can I tell them you agree in principle? It would take all of you working together to make this work out right, so they need to know if you agree."

"I do."

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

What can I say? Sometimes the villains win. Well, I suppose Cathy Madison is not so much of a villain anymore, but she was one originally, and she certainly had aims that others might not have agreed to that she pushed through anyway.

Hmm, if we go by that standard, though, ALL women might be villains! They certainly do get their ways often enough. 


	15. Chapter 15

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Fifteen

by Lionheart

I O I O I

The boards have a common expression, "Quoted for truth" where someone repeats the entirety of someone's post just to show how firmly he agrees with it. Sadly, most of this chapter is that way, quoting a scene written by the professional Christopher Anvil, just to show how true it is.

On the plus side, adapting it to my purposes got me back to working on this story, and you guys get a chapter of unusual length.

Besides, it resolved a problem I was really under a loss how to cross any other way.

I O I O I

His name was Kalderash, Mikael Kalderash, oftentimes known to the outside world as Michael Calender. He was the nephew of one of the elders of his little clan of gypsies, one of the last surviving clans in the world; and that survival was barely accomplished even after willingly assimilating the bare remnants of a handful of other clans, combining their secrets and remaining strengths, binding themselves together in a desperate attempt to make one whole clan strong enough so as to be able to survive in this world.

Things had changed. It was no longer easy to prosper as gypsies. Thus, the nephew of Mr. Mage Dude had, like most of his generation of gypsy children, chosen to modernize to get along in the new world.

Of course, arising as they did from backgrounds strong with magic, it was not often ordinary desk jobs those children wound up seeking. No, even if they went for something that, on the surface of it, seemed mundane and boring, they often applied those skills with very unusual clients.

Take psychotherapy as an example. One could hardly get more ordinary than the routine, scientific approach to dealing with insanity. After all, you were the rational one trying to impose a normal set of behaviors on someone else. You were literally creating normalcy out of little spots of chaos.

However, try applying psychiatric treatment to a race who inspired the Greek legends of minotaurs, specifically the military arm as they tried to conquer yet more hells to add to their interdimensional empire.

Subaltern Swasey of the Tauric Legions stood resplendent in his buff bronze armor, tail idly swishing and placidly chewing his cud as the perspiring human psychologist who was his visitor stumbled hastily away from the cell.

"As you say, Dr. Kalderash," Subaltern Swasey agreed pleasantly, "Such cases as this ought to be left for the specialist."

Mikael Kalderash drew a shaky breath, trying to stem his terror. "I certainly do feel privileged, Subaltern, to come and watch a Tauric psychologist at work. My own... ah, efforts... don't seem to have accomplished much."

In the cell behind him stood a large Tauric soldier, his fur unbrushed and untrimmed, tail thrashing in triumph, a sneer on his face, and a chunk of Mikael Kalderash's sport jacket between his teeth.

"Of course," the reformed gypsy stood up and carefully adjusted what was left of his jacket, "really deep psychotherapy is a tremendously slow process. That is why I am so anxious to meet one of your own people, and observe his methods. Possibly if we could... ah... pool our resources it might be possible to accelerate the course of treatment."

They'd better. Mikael Kalderash was part of a small company of magic-aware human doctors who'd contracted itself out to the Tauric Empire to provide psychiatric care, and their results so far were far from impressive. They were in danger of losing their contract, or worse. Thus, the reason behind this little visit.

The subaltern gave a placid nod. "Consul Poffis himself has often complained that the work takes too long."

"Is the... ah... incidence of relapses..." Dr. Kalderash hesitated, then silently rephrased the question for the less developed Tauric mentality - the only reason they'd contract human doctors in the first place was their supposed brain capacity, after all. Although they'd had a terrible time proving it in the work they'd been doing lately. "How often do the patients have to come back for more treatment?"

"Come back?" the Tauric officer seemed startled at the very idea. "Never. Of course not."

"Do you mean to say treatments are usually SUCCESSFUL?!?" Dr Kalderash could scarcely handle the concept. After all, both human and Tauric minds worked in surprisingly similar ways. Although the minotaurs were slightly slower and simpler, the basic drives were all the same - the reason they'd been able to contract out for human psychologists in the first place.

"Oh, yes," the subaltern now placidly agreed.

Now dismissing the subaltern as ignorant, the gypsy changed tacks, "Does the Consul also treat those suffering from... ah... battle fatigue?"

The Tauric blinked slowly, looking puzzled. "Everyone is fatigued by battle. No, the Consul's treatment is not meant for that. He handles mostly those uncontrollables, the ones with..."

"Severe neuroses?"

"With the... ah... with the violent... ah..." the subaltern paused as if mentally searching for some word or phrase that he had memorize once with the intention of using it later for effect. He straightened, and said learnedly, "With the 'violent antisocial tendencies'."

Mikael blinked, resisting the urge to pat the minotaur on the head. His tail was already wagging. "This is Consul Poffis' specialty, then?"

"Yes," the subaltern agreed quickly, tail still wagging. "He does a lot of this work."

"That is precisely the area we find most difficult." Mikael glanced uneasily back at the prisoner, who was now urging him with coy gestures to come closer to the bars, all the while sharpening his horns on those bars. "We find," he coughed slightly, "that these are often the most obstinate cases. They are difficult to reach... to contact... to form any common..."

The subaltern glanced at the wall clock, set for thirteen hour time. "Consul Poffis can reach them. He will be here soon. He is always on time. Then you will see how he does it."

The prisoner methodically tore his piece of Mikael's jacket to shreds, and leered at him through the bars as he was doing it.

The clang of an outer door and the sound of voices heralded the arrival of Consul Poffis. Upon hearing it, the former gypsy straightened his tie for best effect. "Is the consul... ah... quite high in your academic hierarchy? In civilian life, I mean."

The subaltern looked blank. "He has a Qh.Q."

"Ah. I see. Of course." Mikael wished that he could brush some of the stress seams out of his torn coat, before admitting, "Well... I'm not really familiar with the niceties of Tauric protocol. In English the term 'Consul' translates as 'Magistrate', meaning a judge. So I was wondering if that was a civilian or military title."

The subaltern looked blank. "He is a Consul."

Mikael had the sensation of coming up solidly against a brick wall. He nodded hastily, barely stopping himself from saying, "Silly of me to ask." Such comments, he had found, were likely to cause a Tauric to simply agree. Instead, he prepared himself to meet the Tauric academic.

From the man's record of cures, he was a veritable master psychologist. Some of Dr Kalderash's colleagues, of course, did not consider the record of cures really significant. For them what counted were the methods used and the theoretical justifications of those methods. But Mikael personally found it a little embarrassing that his profession did little better than unaided nature in curing patients. From Consul Poffis (in his mind he decided to call him Dr Poffis), from Dr Poffis he would learn the best of Tauric practices, then combine it with the highest human theory, and perhaps create a universal treatment superior to any hitherto used.

A murmur just outside of the door told of Dr Poffis' approach.

Mikael prepared his smile and readied the comment, "I hope that a useful cross-fertilization of our mutual concepts may bear fruit in a more successful treatment, Doctor." Just where he would put this into the conversation Mikael wasn't sure, but he wanted it to be ready when the time came.

The door latch clicked, and Mikael extended his right hand. He was on alert to approach the tall, distinguished Tauric who would come in, who would perhaps be impressively silver-furred with age, with a slightly wry smile, or perhaps a look of blazing incandescent genius demanding the instant submission of lesser intellects, and...

The door opened. A Tauric officer of below average height, broadly built, with muscles up both sides of his neck under glossy young fur walked in and growled, "All right, Swasey, what's on the sheet for today?"

Subaltern Swasey snapped to full alert and bawled out, "Attention!"

The prisoner raised his right hand to his forehead, as if in salute. Then he lowered the thumb and forefinger to the sides of his snout and blew out hard. In case the idea didn't get across, he spat through the bars onto the consul's tunic.

The consul showed no signs of noticing anything unusual. "At ease. What do we have today, Swasey?"

"This is the first one, sir, in the cell right here."

The short barrel of muscled bull walking upright nodded, started to speak, then frowned at Mikael. Mikael had his phrases all set, and now heard himself say stupidly, "How do you do? I am Dr Kalderash from Rolling Hills Rest And Recuperation Center. I... er... had hoped that a... ah... a useful cross-fertilization of our... ah... mutual..."

Consul Poffis took a closer look at Mikael, who felt hot, humid breath from those bovine nostrils bathing his face in a muggy, fragrant atmosphere.

The gypsy paused, groping around for some way to give a more conventional ending to this opening gambit.

Poffis glanced at the subaltern. "Is this a patient?"

"No, sir. This is the human psychologist from Mental Institution 16."

Mikael cleared his throat, and spoke gently but firmly, "We find it more appropriate to designate it 'Rolling Hills Rest and...' "

Poffis looked him over coldly. "What the devil's the matter with them out there?"

Mikael looked blank. "What?"

Poffis barked shortly, "Why don't they get their thumb out of their mouth and give us some action? I sent half a dozen cases of combat nerves in six months ago, and so far we've gotten just one back. The boy was worthless. What the devil do you do to your patients?"

He turned to Subaltern Swasey. "I notice this fellow has a chunk out of his jacket. Has he been administering treatment in my absence?" the bull roared.

"Not actually, sir. He just walked over and tried to reason with the patient, that's all."

Poffis looked mollified. "That shouldn't do much harm." He glanced at the cell. "Now then, this fellow hasn't been in combat yet, has he?"

"No, sir. He isn't out of training yet."

"You're sure we've got the right records? This isn't a damned administrative bungle like that last mess?"

"No, sir," Swasey agreed grimly. "I checked that myself, sir. This is the right bull, alright."

"What's the recommendation?"

"Court recommended death. Patient's commanding officer pleaded for leniency."

The patient laughed out loud, as if witnessing a particularly silly scene in a play.

Consul Poffis looked the patient over appraisingly, then glanced at Swasey. "On what grounds did his commanding officer plead for leniency?"

"He thought the fellow could be made into a good soldier, sir. With the proper treatment."

Poffis scowled. "Yes, there's that again. What's on the sheet, Swasey? How many of these cases have we got for today?"

Swasey looked apologetic. "Three more for this morning, sir. Now, about this prisoner..."

Poffis stared at him with hard and tiny eyes. "And this afternoon?"

"Sir?"

"How many this afternoon?"

"We've got... that is..." Swasey swallowed. "Sir, there are six more after this one."

Poffis' brows came together. "That's too many. Put one of them over til tomorrow."

"Well, sir, tomorrow..."

Poffis snarled. "It takes time to get a cure started. I'll handle three this morning, and three this afternoon. From there, it's routine. But I'm taking six new ones today and that's that."

"Sir, at that rate they'll pile up from here all the way to Training, and the tribune will..."

Poffis' small bovine eyes glinted beneath a heavy horned brow. "I know how many new patients I can handle in a day, Swasey. If the tribune wants me to take on eight, ten, or twelve in a day, then I am going to end up on the other side of these bars, and the tribune can see how THAT works out! Let them pile up. That's better than sending back fake cures. There's a cause to this mess somewhere. The sooner that dawns on them, the quicker they'll slap a quarantine on this whole region and burn out the pus. Now, let's have the keys to the cell so I can get started."

Subaltern Swasey dazedly handed over the keys to the cell.

Dr Kalderash for his part was stupefied, grappling with the concept that the Taurics thought six new patients a day, with routine follow up treatment, was about right. If a human psychologist got six patients really cured in a year it was cause for celebration. Baffled, he took a fresh look at the patient Poffis was ready to treat.

The patient had watched with interest the exchange between Poffis and Swasey, but now stiffened as he saw Poffis coming toward the cell. He approached the bars threateningly, bared his teeth and suddenly reached out through the bars to take a grab at Poffis' uniform.

Having only just been through that reception himself, Mikael Kalderash watched intently, wondering what Poffis could possibly do now.

Poffis instantly seized the out-stretched hand, whirled and yanked downward. The patient screamed and slammed against the bars. Poffis promptly kicked him back against the opposite wall, then unlocked the cell door, went in, banged the door shut and tossed the keys to Swasey. The patient shook his head dazedly, felt his shoulder, glared, let out a roar of rage and sprang across the cell at Poffis.

Poffis whirled, shot out a hoof, tripped the patient, and sent him smashing horns first into the far corner of his cell.

The patient lay on his face for about fifteen seconds, then sat up dazedly, stared at Poffis and sucked in a deep breath. His voice came out loud and ringing. "I got a right to a rest home! I'm crazy! I'm a patient! I'm sick! You can't touch me! I got a right to go to a rest home!"

Poffis huffed angrily, "If I knew where that idea came from, I could get this work load down to normal. Alright, Swasey, read the charge."

Subaltern Swasey unfolded a long sheet of paper and read in a clear, sober voice, "Prisoner committed the following acts, which have been proved by careful and thorough inquiry. He: 1) Threatened to beat up his own mess-mates, and then took food from them by force. 2) Threatened his squad leader with a knife, when reprimanded. 3) While off-duty, struck an elderly bull who happened to step in his way, thus bringing disgrace on the armed forces. 4) On being charged, as above, laughed in the face of his commanding officer, Decturion Boggis, and referred to Decturion Boggis as a 'molk'. 5) Struck Decturion Boggis on the snout with his open hand. 6) Threatened Decturion Boggis that if Decturion Boggis defended himself, he (the prisoner) would state under oath that Decturion Boggis struck first. 7) Resisted the guards summoned to the scene. 8) While under detention, announced to everyone within hearing that he would receive a medical discharge and be home living on a pension while those who did their duty would be eaten up by mikurils for their pains. Prisoner taunted all law-abiding soldiers within hearing that they would soon be at the front defending him. 9) By voice and act, abused everyone in authority who came near him during detention. 10) Refused to cooperate with properly designated authorities in curbing his undisciplined actions. This refusal was compounded by disrespect and insults and reflects no detectable principle or ideal, but merely an undisciplined, willful, ill-governed nature, which is urgently in need of correction."

Subaltern Swasey lowered the paper. "That's it, sir."

"I see," Poffis grumbled. "Well, well. Here we have a full-blown case of it." He studied the patient, who got to his hooves looking apprehensive and defiant.

"Now then," growled Poffis, "the first thing to realize is that how you got here doesn't matter. This is the trap right next to the drain. Either we cure you, or they shoot you. And we aren't given much time to cure you."

"I'm SICK!" cried the prisoner. "I want to go to a rest..."

"Luckily," Poffis rolled on as if the patient had said nothing, "We've got just the way to cure you. We've developed it over several thousands of years. There are only two things you'll need to know about this cure: It's quick, and it hurts."

The prisoner opened his snout, and shut it again. Poffis was moving along like a planetary body, showing no signs of stopping for anything. "There's one reliable way," Poffis began snorting, heaving his chest like a bellows, "that Nature teaches what is right and what is wrong. When you do right, you get rewarded. When you do wrong, you get hurt. Our method is the same, but more condensed."

"Look!" the patient cried exasperatedly, one hand outstretched. "I'm not responsible! You can't blame me for..."

"The basic idea of the cure is very simple," Poffis rolled on briskly. "It is based on the observation of sages, that there is a real inner self, which is not subject to the phenomena of the physical world, and an outer self which is."

A series of expressions crossed the patient's face, ending with a look of defiant outrage. "To the mikurils with all this stuff!" He followed that with a piece of profanity that took Mikael Kalderash's breath away, but that left Poffis and Swasey completely untouched.

"The real inner self," continued Poffis, "is conscious of events, because it is 'connected,' by resonances and various nerve-tracts, with the outer physical self that exists in the physical world, and is a type of living protoplasmic machine, serving the the inner spiritual self, which is not physical."

The patient shouted, "I'm crazy! I WANT TO GO TO A REST HOME!!"

Poffis continued steadily along. "To properly treat the patient, it is necessary to distinguish between the true inner self of the patient, the outer self which is the medium through which the patient contacts and is contacted by the physical world, and the various traits, habits, and emotions which manifest outwardly through the physical body, and inwardly by coloring the information passed to the brain and thence to the real self."

The patient stamped his hoof. "Ah for..."

"The real self," Poffis bulled on relentlessly, "is strictly blameless. The trouble comes from the wrong traits and attitudes having been established, usually in childhood, and by their habitual presence having generated emotions which falsely color information passed on to the brain. The cure for this is best administered early by the parent. By inflicting pain without damage, the patient breaks the grip of the wrong emotions, destroys its effects in distorting the information passed on to the brain and demonstrates that emotions are temporary and changeable. Seeing the wrong emotion flee before the hand of the parent, the child is emboldened to strike down the wrong emotion himself, and takes the first step towards becoming the master of his own house."

The patient ground his teeth, and looked around like one seeking sympathy for the heavy burden under which he labors.

"Punishment," Poffis said methodically, "should be swift, intense and fleeting, with proper suggestions for future improvement, and should be ended without vindictiveness when the right attitude is firmly established. That's the theory. Now for the practice."

The patient leaned against the bars in an attitude of exaggerated boredom, and looked ready to fall asleep any time.

"The practice," continued Poffis, "is even simpler than the theory. By appropriate action, we first permit the undesirable traits to manifest themselves and promptly deliver painful consequences on each occasion. Next we administer a general treatment designed to loosen up bad traits and induce a cooperative frame of mind, during which we urge improvement. Following this comes formal punishment, then actual recovery. All this is basically very simple, the difficulty being to properly suit the treatment to the individual patient. That's the practice. Now you have it, and your mind will retain enough so that it may be of use to you later. It's time. Prepare for treatment."

Outside the cell, Subaltern Swasey opened a faucet that filled a bucket half full of water. He tossed a sponge into the bucket, picked up a clean towel and a first aid kit, set a chair just outside a corner of the cell and dusted off the seat of the chair with a whisk broom.

The patient glanced around with a scowl and gave the cell door a quick shake. The door was solidly locked.

Poffis glanced to the wall clock, then cleared his throat with a somewhat pompous, false and irritating sound. He whined, "Now, first, permit me to point out... ah... that this method, while it could be used for wrong purposes, is in fact only used for the real good and genuine..."

Mikael Kalderash, outside of the cell, squinted at Consul Poffis, and tried to get him back into focus. By some trick of vocal wizardry, Poffis began to project such an air of sweet reasonableness that even Mikael felt the urge to get Poffis by the throat and bang his head against the wall. Mikael had no trouble overcoming this impulse, but the patient abruptly ceased looking for a way out, and eyed Poffis dangerously.

"... welfare of the patient," Poffis was saying sweetly. "The entire treatment is meant for the patient, who, deprived of proper parental assistance in the initial stages of character development, is thus disadvantaged by his defective self-control. We assist the deprived patient in many areas..."

"Grrr," growled the patient. His tail flicked back and forth, and his head lowered toward the consul, putting him in line with his horns.

"... always," Poffis minced piously, "to aid in whatever measure may be granted to us the unfortunate, underprivileged..."

The patient blurred forward, smashed his horns against the consul's waist and slammed him to the floor.

Poffis landed stretched out, his forearms taking much of the impact, rolled aside fast as the patient raised his head to get a chance to stamp one heavy hoof down at him, bounded to his own hooves and landed a blow that sent the patient sprawling.

As the patient stumbled, dazed and fearful, to his hooves, Poffis seemed to undergo a delayed action from the blow he'd suffered. He gripped his side and tottered around the cell like someone in the last stages of physical deterioration.

This was too good an opportunity for the patient to resist. He hastened over to start a blow from the floor up, aimed to gore Poffis from navel to jaw.

Poffis, however, recovered with miraculous speed, moved aside as the blow whistled past and smashed the patient a powerful blow to his tender snout.

Mikael Kalderash watched in stupefaction as Subaltern Swasey stepped forward to offer Poffis the water bucket. Soon Poffis was bending over the unconscious patient, tenderly bathing his bloodied face with a wet sponge.

As the patient came to and looked around dazedly, Poffis at once began to plead, "Now look here, I'm your officer. You can't..."

The patient at once caught the pleading tone, and the words, "I'm your officer." He reacted with still-fast reflexes.

"Oh, can't I?" he snarled. He staggered to his feet with Poffis' help, and immediately tried to plant his knee in Poffis' groin. Poffis turned too fast, and immediately sank his fist in his patient's midsection.

Dr Kalderash watched the patient collapse and lie motionless.

Poffis now dumped a bucket of water on the patient, brought him to, and as the patient looked around dazedly Poffis bent over and said sympathetically, "Understand, none of this is meant for the real you. We have to retrain your habits and attitudes, and this is the quickest way. I realize what you're going through, because I've been through the same thing myself."

The patient sat up dizzily. Some instinct for self preservation apparently prompted him to keep Poffis talking. "You... you did?"

"Yes," Poffis reminisced. "I've been through the whole thing. You see, I had bad habits." A tinge of regret entered his voice. "And wrong attitudes, and I didn't even know it. That's how it works. No one could reason with me, or get through to me by anything that boiled down to reason, because, you see, this wrong attitude of mine distorted everything, and I couldn't even understand things right."

Dr Kalderash was staring, wondering what would happen next. Poffis' voice was starting to grow heated, and his sides had begun to heave again.

"So," Poffis continued emotionally, "they stuck me in a cell, and for these bad habits and wrong attitudes they beat me up and slammed me all around." He sucked in another deep breath. "Sure, I had it coming. I deserved it, because of the bad habits." His voice dropped. "But I felt every blow. It was meant for those bad habits, but -I- felt it!"

There was now an impression of smoldering resentment building up behind Poffis' expressionless snout. The patient glanced around nervously.

"Bad habits," Poffis declared flatly. "THEY got me in all that trouble. And -I- suffered! I HATE them!"

"Sure," the patient consoled nervously. "I can appreciate..."

"I HATE bad habits, bad traits, bad emotions," Poffis declared fervently, his voice rising. "But they've been beat out of ME, so now there's only ONE WAY I CAN GET BACK AT THEM!"

The patient tried a quick shake of the cell door. It was still locked.

"And THAT" Poffis shouted, sides heaving with rapid deep breaths, "is to FIND THEM IN SOMEONE ELSE!!"

The patient's cow-like eyes were now wide open, exposing white, something you almost never saw in minotaurs. "Hey now. Wait a minute. Listen now!"

"Right here," Poffis snarled, lowering his horns as the patient quailed. "I see conceit, arrogance, carelessness..."

Poffis' voice, already charged with emotion, took on a tone suggestive of rending flesh and popping bones. He tore off his tunic and tossed it toward a corner of the cell, where Swasey with one deft motion snapped it out through the bars and laid it on the chair, neatly folded.

Patient and psychotherapist were suddenly flashing around the cell in a blur of speed, the prisoner screaming at the top of his lungs. "You can't! HELP! You're responsible! STOP!"

WHAM!

The cell was one flying tangle of furry arms, hooves, tails and horns, first with the prisoner's horrified face in view, then Poffis' grim visage. Grunts, screams and gasps resounded like the sound of a medieval torture chamber.

Subaltern Swasey, watching, grinned and nodded.

Dr Kalderash looked on in horrified stupefaction, staring at the chaos that resolved, moment by moment, into grim scenes. For an instant the prisoner was flattened out on the floor. Then he was slammed motionless against the bars. Next he was suspended in midair, one outstretched arm against the ceiling. A fraction of a second later, it was one chaos of violence all over again, interspersed with Poffis' grim voice.

"You WILL listen!"

"You WILL try!"

"You WILL learn!"

There came a sudden crash, and the prisoner was saying rapidly, "Alright! I'll do it! Sure, I'll Do It! Anything you say!"

Poffis stared intently into the prisoner's eyes. "You look crafty. You don't mean it."

The cell exploded into chaos.

The prisoner screamed, "I Promise! I MEAN it!"

Poffis stared deep into his eyes. "Close, but you're not there yet."

The violence ended next time with a cry of despair. Then Poffis straightened. "Swasey!"

"Yes, sir! The lash?"

"The board."

Swasey handed in a medium size, solidly made paddle. The prisoner stared as Poffis took it, then spoke in a kindly tone of voice, "Bend over, son. Grip the bars."

The prisoner stared, swallowed, tore his gaze from the paddle, bent and took hold of the bars in both hands.

Poffis took the paddle in a practiced grip. "You have committed ten serious offenses. For each offense, there must be a blow. The blows must be hard or they will not be punishment. Hold on tight. Swasey!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Read the offenses."

The subaltern raised the list and read slowly and distinctly. At the end of each numbered offense, Poffis delivered a staggering blow. Toward the end, as the list went on and on, the prisoner began to sob, but continued to tightly grip the bars. At last, the list, which seemed to Dr Kalderash, watching dizzily, to be ten times as long as when it was first read, at last it came to an end.

Swasey refolded the paper soberly. "That is the end of the list of offenses, sir."

Poffis nodded gruffly. "So be it. Take the board."

As he handed the paddle out through the bars, the prisoner collapsed on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.

Poffis waited a moment, then spoke, "Prisoner, that ends the punishment. But punishment is not necessarily the same as repayment. You have, by your actions, done grave damage to the Tauric Empire itself. Yet the Tauric Empire feeds and shelters you. You have attacked what defended you. Are you sorry?"

"Yes," cried the prisoner.

Poffis nodded. "Good. Look at me. Are you going to do better?"

"YES!"

Poffis nodded slowly. "Yes, I see you mean it. Swasey!"

"Yes, sir?"

"The prisoner has hard work in front of him. He will need to sleep, but first he needs something to ease the pain, and he also needs a little warm, thin gruel. Take care of this at once."

"Yes, sir."

Mikael Kalderash, still watching in a sort of daze, saw Poffis help the prisoner to his hooves, to ease him, very carefully, warning him where to put his hands and hooves, onto the cot. To Mikael's astonishment, the prisoner, still sobbing, gripped Poffis' hand in what appeared to be gratitude.

Poffis even consoled gently. "Don't worry, son. You may think we're going to half-kill you. But we'll get you out of it."

Swasey stepped into the cell, carrying a small bowl in one hand and a jar of bandages in the other. Poffis stepped out of the cell and beckoned Kalderash into the next room. Uncertain what to expect, Mikael followed with unspoken reservations. Poffis shut the door behind them.

"Now, just what is going on at Mental Institute 16?"

Dr Kalderash gave a guarded shrug. "Why, just standard treatment."

"Whose standard treatment?"

"Well..."

"What is it?"

Dr Kalderash drew a deep breath, and described it.

Poffis shook his head. "Conceivably that may work on humans. But a thing like that won't work on Taurics."

"Is that so?" Dr Kalderash rejoined, his professional pride touched. After all, according to the best tests the species had near identical mental structures at the basic level. "Well, all I can say is, it's certainly more SCIENTIFIC than the procedure you use!"

"Obviously," Poffis scoffed. "That's exactly what's wrong with it. The techniques of science were developed for use on INANIMATE OBJECTS!"

As the former gypsy grappled with that statement, Poffis rolled on, "Observe what has happened. Science came into existence to solve purely physical problems. To solve those problems it was necessary to exclude emotional considerations. The forces operative in this physical world are different from the forces operative in the emotional world. It is as if one were land and the other sea. The seafarer who goes ashore has little need for nets, lines and a knowledge of the tides, winds and currents. But when he has built up his structure on solid land, is he then automatically fitted to go back to sea, relying exclusively on land methods? It won't work, Dr Kalderash, except where, so to speak, the emotional sea has been frozen over, turning to solid ice on the surface. In the emotional world, to say, 'My methods are entirely scientific' is similar to saying, 'I have made an entirely scientific proposal of marriage'. It is cause for alarm, not confidence."

Dr Kalderash hesitated, distracted by the uneasy suspicion that there might be some truth to Poffis' point, but stung by the implications. If psychology wasn't a science, then wasn't he, Mikael Kalderash, a charlatan of some kind?

Poffis spoke earnestly, "Why insist that your study must be a science? Should everything be jammed in the same mold, and any parts that don't fit be thrown away? Just because a hammer is useful, should we throw away screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers and every other tool and force the hammer to do work it isn't meant for? Or, by some kind of verbal wizardry, have we got to represent screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers and other useful tools as different kinds of hammers? They are not hammers, my friend, and more than all useful studies are sciences. If you let such a distortion enter your thought, you may not only blur your picture of the subject you are thinking of, but also your picture of science itself."

On thinking it over, it seemed perfectly clear to Mikael that is psychology was not a science, then he, Mikael Kalderash, must necessarily be a fake. If psychology was not a science, then it followed that he was not a scientist, and this meant that he was less than, for instance, a physicist, or a chemist, and if he admitted to not being a scientist, it followed that he would SEEM less than those incredible creatures, the POLITICAL scientists who, everyone agreed, were not actually scientists at all.

All of this went through Mikael's head in a flash, and at the end he said coolly, "Psychology, Consul Poffis, whatever it may be among Taurics, is universally recognized among humans as the 'science of the mind'. I certainly don't intend to argue this proposition."

Poffis had been watching Dr Kalderash's expression intently. "Psychology," he said, with an air of one who reluctantly concedes a point, "may deserve to be a science; it may have distinct scientific elements; but if you say psychology is and can only be a science, then I must say that in your respect for your subject, you are mistakenly throwing half your tool kit into the nearest ditch. The essence of science is the Scientific Method, and the essence of the Scientific Method is the Repeatable Experiment. To have a repeatable experiment requires first that the object experimented upon be comparatively constant. If atoms could argue, fight back, run away, sulk, plead, throw tantrums, learn our terminology and use it against us, then we might reasonably have some doubts as to just how strictly scientific the study of atoms could be. But in that case, would the study of atoms be any less important?"

"I came here to learn your method, so that I could combine your methods and ours..." Dr Kalderash allowed hesitantly.

Poffis looked doubtful. "Your method, as you have described it, suggests to me the attempt to fix a broken sword through the study of astronomy."

That got the gypsy riled up. "And how would you explain your brand of psychology?"

"Very simple." Poffis returned smoothly, completely unruffled. "To begin with, we believe in sympathy, power of will, character, habit, love, association, contrast, the power of example, the soul, the spirit..."

"What a hodgepodge!" Mikael Kalderash broke in angrily. "You've got religion in there! You've got..."

"What we've got in there," returned Poffis firmly, "is Truth, and we accept Truth from ANY source, including religion."

"But, of all the unscientific..."

Poffis momentarily paralyzed Dr Kalderash with a poke of his long forefinger. "The one advantage of science is that it enables us, where it is applicable, to reach Truth. Truth is the goal, my friend, and science is one means of reaching Truth, where science applies. Don't forget your quest. You are seeking Truth. Don't mistake the means for the goal."

Poffis went out, leaving Dr Kalderash open mouthed. Dazedly, he considered Poffis' last two sentences.

"You are seeking Truth." Certainly this was so. Why had he ever been interested in science in the first place? He Was Seeking Truth! And that warning, "Don't mistake the means for the goal." Could he, Mikael Kalderash, possibly be like a boy who spent so much time laboring over his finicky but beloved car that he rarely actually went anywhere?

Or like one of those innumerable young firebrand politicians determined to change the system who, forced to learn the ropes to get by, at the end of their terms had become so much a part of the establishment that they couldn't be more a part of making things stay the way they'd always been, utterly forgetting their original goals on the road to getting there.

The rest of Poffis' argument was borne in on him. How the [censored] DID you have a science when the thing you were working with was as unstable and changeable as the human personality and human intellect? Science? Was it an example of science when the object of the experiment got up and tried to strangle you, as had happened twice now to poor Hardison? Was it science when the experimenter fell in love with the object of the experiment, as had happened to Pangeist? And what about Hergeswalther, who got sucked into the patient's fantasy, and was only gotten out again because the patient realized what was going on?"

"Science!" snarled Dr Kalderash. "My foot! It's not a science! Only PARTS of it are scientific!"

And, in that case, how was it going to get him to the Truth?

For the second time, it dawned on Mikael Kalderash that Poffis really was a master psychologist. How the deuce had Poffis known what he, Dr Kalderash, had turned to science for? And just how had Poffis been able to drive his idea across with such effect that, a bare few minutes later, Mikael was accepting them as his own? But the main thing was, how was Poffis able to make cures while he, Mikael Kalderash, spent his time floundering around in the dark, and as often as not accomplished little more than to give the patient a knowledge of the underlying theory, which might or might not work?

Dr Kalderash hesitated, then went to the door.

Subaltern Swasey glanced up and smiled. Across the room, the patient slept peacefully.

Dr Kalderash asked in a low voice, "Does the consul always use the same treatment?"

"No. It depends on the patient."

That was helpful, Mikael thought sourly.

Thankfully, the subaltern continued, "Consul Poffis looks to see what is wrong with the patient, then he fixes it. Down the corridor is one who is here because it is against his principles to obey orders. Consul Poffis will break his arguments into little bits and pieces. He will make it all so clear that the prisoner will go out seeing the question in a new light. But most of these uncontrollables have a treatment more like this one here. Only, each treatment is different in the details, because the prisoners are different."

Dr Kalderash nodded. He was still getting nowhere. At random, to keep the conversation going until he thought of a new approach, he commented, "No wonder the consul complained about the work load."

"Yes," agreed the subaltern. "The work load is piling up, and the consul hasn't even an apprentice to help him."

Dr Kalderash nodded sympathetically, then blinked. "Apprentice? You mean you teach psychotherapy by the apprentice system?"

"Not I," disagreed the subaltern, block headedly literal minded.

"No, no," Dr Kalderash waved the misunderstanding away. "I mean that the Tauric system for teaching psychotherapy is by apprenticeship?"

"THE Tauric system?" the subaltern blinked blankly. "Why should we have only one system? Also, there are schools that teach it."

"Yes, but you can't have both," the gypsy disagreed.

Subaltern Swasey looked at him. "Why not?"

"Well, the results wouldn't be uniform, for one thing."

"So?"

Dr Kalderash looked blank. Here he was again. The minotaurs, block headed fellows, did some silly thing, and when he tried to explain why it was silly the reasons evaporated, and he was left with this foolish feeling.

"Well," he stubbornly insisted, "obviously a man taught at a special school would know more than a mere apprentice. By the results not being uniform, I mean that the apprentice would be inferior."

"Oh, you think so? With Consul Poffis to teach, you think the apprentice would be laggardly in his efforts?"

The annoying thing was the slow and stubborn steer had taken an amused tone as though explaining things to some thick-headed child!

"Well, no," Dr Kalderash conceded, massaging his forehead. "I can see the consul would keep him working. But, after all, there are a lot of things to be taught. At a school, there would be a special teacher for each subject."

The subaltern nodded agreeably, back to chewing his cud. "And this special teacher will have a class with many in it, and split his efforts among the class."

"All right," Dr Kalderash tossed down his hands angrily, "if this apprentice system works, why do students go to school instead of apprenticing themselves to the consul?"

"Because," the subaltern answered promptly, "they are afraid to apprentice themselves to the consul. once they apprentice themselves to him, he will not let them go until they are almost as good at cures as he is, and he is one of the best there is. It will be nothing but work, work, study, practice, practice, and the consul will see through excuses, punish laziness, stimulate earnest work, and judge with merciless accuracy. And we have been unable to find any students who are anxious to go through this."

Dr Kalderash thought it over. "But, at the end, his apprentice will be almost as good as he is?"

"Oh, yes. Consul Poffis will see to that."

"Hmm," Mikael paused to consider. He was totally fed up with floundering around. Among other kinds of patients, Rolling Hills Rest and Recuperation Center, where he worked, got a good number of uncontrollables. The frustration in dealing with them was terrific. "Ah," he hedged, "is there any limitation... on age, race and so on... would the consul take, say a human, past the student age... on as his apprentice?"

"With this work load?" the subaltern spoke decisively, "the consul would take anyone, provided the apprentice was in earnest, and, of course, showed some promise."

"How many apprentices can the consul take at once?"

"I don't know." the subaltern chewed placidly for a moment. "I've never known him to take more than three at a time."

Dr Kalderash thought hard. He would like to have a record of cures like the consul's. He'd also very much like to have a good excuse for escaping having to care for that random fosterling his uncle was dropping on him like so much baggage. Taking on an apprenticeship would do that, even by clan law. On the other hand, he certainly didn't want the consul's undiluted attention focused on him alone. It followed that he would need to interest someone else. The fosterling was out, as it created too many tangles in two cases that both called for absolute authority. How about Hardison? After that second strangling attempt, Hardison had sworn that he had always wanted to be a corporate lawyer, and the director had practically turning himself inside out to keep Hardison from quitting, right on the spot, and heading for law school.

Wolfram and Hart was always hiring the magically-aware. While the Kalderash had scruples, most of those who worked with demons saw no difference worth mentioning between things with morals, like minotaurs, and the general run of the mill demons without them.

Then there was Hergeswalther. His brief sojourn into insanity had given him a new outlook. Who among the staff hadn't heard him muttering, "I could go nuts myself, any time. Any Time!" What wouldn't Hergeswalther do to get a better grip on sanity?

There were two additional prospective apprentices, if he could only sell them on the idea. Mikael glanced at the subaltern. "How much do apprentices get paid?"

"Not much as apprentices," the subaltern chewed, "beyond room and board. But they get Very high pay when they have acquired their skill."

"Hmm," Mikael Kalderash pondered. "That's very interesting." In his mind, he was saying to Hardison and Hergeswalther, "it's a tremendously exciting idea to me, from a scientific viewpoint. Here is a method that works, that turns out cures like clockwork, and it's never really been scientifically analyzed."

"Yes, " he could hear Hardison say, "But for Pete's sake, Mik, to apprentice ourselves to this Tauric witch doctor..."

"I know, I know," he could already see himself waving off Hardison's reply. "But that's the only way to really get his methods. We could write a book afterward, detailing the underlying scientific elements of the cures."

"Hey, we could, couldn't we?" Hardison had always wanted to write a book.

Then Hergeswalther would say uneasily, "And meanwhile, what do we eat?"

"Well, we get room and board," he would answer, "and I guess not much else. But afterward we've got the ability. And then they really pay. Believe me, there's plenty of business there. The patients are piling up fast, and we could CURE them!"

"Yes," Hergeswalther would say with a smile. "That would be a change, wouldn't it? If our treatments would actually work?"

There would be a thoughtful silence, and that would be it.

Plus, he'd get to write that letter to his uncle saying there was no chance for him to take on a fosterling at this time, as he was just way too busy. In natural course of working with the minotaurs, he'd been drawn into an apprenticeship, and there was nothing to be done about that.

Yes, that could work very nicely indeed. Then it wouldn't even be his problem who they found to take in this Faith girl. Solving his uncle's surge of parental feeling for this street urchin wouldn't be his concern to take care of, just learning how to cure patients.

Actual cures.

Yes, things could begin working out nicely.

I O I O I

End Part Fifteen


	16. Chapter 16

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Sixteen

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Next morning it was a long wait for the Scoobies waiting for Amy to wake up. She was gone almost sixteen hours before she stirred, groaned, and emerged from the Ancestor Guide spell.

In the meantime they had plenty to discuss.

Between Willow's hacking out town maps and civil information, and the help of Xander's spirit-granted knowledge of demon nests, favorite haunts and kill zones for vampires and the other night life, as well as other data, they'd been able to fill in rather complete tactical maps of the greater Sunnydale area - with particular emphasis on cemeteries and holy ground, dangerous territory to avoid as well as safe zones and routes to reach shelter at need.

Memorizing those was almost as good as opening the brow chakra as far as identifying and avoiding threats before getting in actual danger. Although it was sobering in a very morbid way when this pointed out just how many teen hangouts were prime vamp hunting grounds. The Bronze, in particular, may as well have been a corner butcher shop for the local icky crawlies.

Still, the new Sunnydale Tactical Map became a part of everyone's downloads last night, even for Jesse's combat-shy family. Actually, especially for them, as it gave them a detailed knowledge of what areas of town to work hardest to avoid. And most supernatural threats in the area were after easy meat. If you were inconvenient to prey upon they'd most likely go after easier meals.

Still, everyone was on pins and needles waiting for Amy to wake up. This time they knew better than to call the hospital or anything, so it was a patient yet expectant wait they spent by bouncing around ideas for neutralizing vamp nests.

Despite this, when Amy groaned and sat up, she was instantly surrounded, offered cups of water, and generally helped back while bombarded by eager questions from just about everybody, minus Jesse, who was out spending the day with his family (and in particular his mom, who wanted to buy a cross shaped door knocker), but plus her mom Cathy. And, of course, the question most in the forefront of everyone's minds got summed up by Willow.

"So, who was your ancestor? Was it anyone we know?"

Amy Madison looked up and grinned at her friends, putting aside the cup of water with unconscious style and grace after taking a few swallows. "Robin Hood and Marian."

She got instantly surrounded by admiring squeals and engulfed in a 'Wow! I'm so impressed I don't know what to say' hug by her mom.

"So, you're an archer now?" Willow confirmed, bursting with gladness for her friend.

Xander, too, was grinning. "Hey, we've been playing 'Merry Men' for a month and a half and now she's the genuine article! How does it feel?"

Amy laughed bright and free, an unrestrained sound totally at odds with her previous shy and repressed demeanor. "Yes," she confirmed quite gladly. "I wore the Lincoln Green, and know those seven score outlawed yeomen who followed Good Sir Robin."

'Okay' several watching this thought at once. 'What a change!'

The lilt of storytelling language already rippled from Amy's throat, however. "I trod the leafy woods of Sherwood with those who knew her hidden paths so well, feasted on meat plucked from the Sheriffs own kitchens and loosed my goose-fletched shafts on many a wicked knight."

She then proceeded to tell them tales of her ancestors, showing a stunning degree of familiarity with the Lady Marian Fitzwalter, her husband Sir Robin of Locksley, their companions (who, from her tales, treated her like uncles) and their improbable skill in archery, swordplay, and disguise.

They easily passed the day away that way without hardly having realized it, and the first they knew of the passage of time was when Jesse rejoined them that evening, when, upon being informed of who her ancestors were and how formidable her archery skill was, immediately declared. "Wow! Now we've got two combat types, Zorro-Xander for close in and our stunning lady archer Maid Amy for ranged!"

"While I'll not deny my skill with bow, nor his with sword," Amy cut him off with a wry smirk, "You underestimate the heroes of Sherwood. Have you heard nothing of the tales of their mighty skill with staves and swords? I can handle myself quite well in combat up close or afar off."

The lady (for they had all taken to thinking of her thus) then inhaled deeply and revealed, "However, my heart was not captured by swashbuckling, nor, though I did master them, was my rime focus on the combat arts, nor even on maidenly ones. T'was the skills of a troubadour I fancied, and was as much a student of Alan-a-Dale as my own ancestors."

"Huh?" Jesse's face reflected the general confusion.

"She learned music," Xander translated with a wry smirk.

"Why?" Jesse seemed genuinely puzzled. "I mean, when you could've had cool combat skills, why learn the lute, or whatever?"

Amy laughed, again that free and uninhibited sound. Then she admitted to outstanding skill as an archer, and no less with sword or staff, as great as any woman had achieved. "However," she skillfully drew their attention back to her intended subject, "At least against the foes we face, music is a far more deadly weapon."

She was surrounded by blank stars.

The girl simply giggled. "What? Do none of you know about holy symbols? Yes, it is possible to carry them in physical form, but what do you think a hymn is? It is a prayer set to music - a holy symbol that you hear instead of see."

Looks of dawning understanding now surrounded her.

"Exactly," the maid told them primly, tinkling with hints of mischief. "When you sing uplifting music on holy subjects, you fill not only your aura but the very air, earth and stones around you with an energy that demons hate and cannot abide. You are creating a 'no demon' zone that lingers even after the music has passed."

She stared at them, making sure she had their attention. "Why do you think monasteries and churches were always so famous for their choirs? Why did all the peasants and laborers sing so much? They didn't have radio back then, and consequently every person made their own music, whether whistled or sung or played on instruments. And demon attacks were much scarcer back then than they are now. Do you know why?"

She favored them all with a kind smile, letting them in on the secret. "It was music that made the difference as much as anything. So, like the old phrase 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away', singing religious hymns one day a week loaded you up with enough positive energy to make you unpalatable to demons. And the styles of music that existed back then were deliberate - they were created for a purpose, and that purpose was to reinforce the benefit you got from singing holy themed music, to act as auditory holy symbols, driving the demons away. The classical style was created, adjusted and refined to be poison to demons. That was its purpose. So, even when you weren't singing songs about Christ the very tenor of the musical themes protected you."

The blonde girl now affected unconcern for her next statements. "Of course. the peasants sang religious themed music, while the nobles scoffed, and the 'sophisticated elites' arrogantly turned up their noses at the 'simple faith' of the 'superstitious peasantry'; then they sang bawdy drinking songs about how depraved they were, or made fun of others in their music. But it wasn't the simple peasants who got eaten by demons and vampires, it was those so-called sophisticated elites - who lacked the same protection because they scoffed at religious music."

Now the girl adopted a playful air, confiding in them, "Why do you think so many traditions regarding music exist? Why do we sing at birthdays, or go caroling during the Christmas season? I'll tell you about caroling. Going door to door singing songs about Christ is an offensive practice to demons and creatures of darkness. They can't abide it. It's like you are spraying holy symbols in through their windows and doors. It drives them away; so villages, towns, just about any community did it on a regular basis. They made it a routine way of cleansing their communities of demons every year, just like spring cleaning, in a demony way. Every year you cleaned out what had crept in without you noticing, and everyone was safer for it."

Now she leaned back, smiling brilliantly for them all. "The right kind of music is like bug bombs to creatures of darkness - they either leave or they die. So they leave, and people are better off for it. The population of demons on Earth was very thin back in those days, compared to today, just because most communities were so well protected."

"Sweet!!" Jesse grinned and played a little air guitar.

Amy grimaced slightly. "Actually, Jesse, your tastes in music have got to undergo a change. While the musical styles of the middle ages were designed with demon hunting in mind, auditory aerosols for hunting or destroying the forces of darkness, most of modern music is exactly the opposite. It makes demons stronger, not weaker. Who do think would benefit from listening to 'Black Sabbath: Live Evil', the forces of Light or Darkness?"

The boy formerly playing air guitar paled.

"Sex, drugs, and rock and roll," Willow whispered quietly, looking timid as she raised her face to the others. "It's all about celebrating the baser instincts, isn't it? About bringing out the animal in man."

Amy nodded. "The musical industry is headed by people like our mayor, either demons themselves or in league with demons, and they crafted our modern music to be the exact opposite of what medieval music did. It degrades and cheapens the human creature, weakening them against the forces of evil."

"Don't look at me like that," Amy scolded Jesse, who was looking betrayed and crushed. "I like rock music, I really do. But I don't want to tell you what kind of feelings it evokes in me. And I wouldn't want to face a demon after listening to it. I know for a fact that celebrating your base instincts reduces man from God's finest creation to a simple animal - and simple animals are nothing but prey for more powerful creatures."

I O I O I

Amy had that whole thing going that Xander had, namely the ability to make just about anything you'd need to survive based on nothing more than what was available at the time and your own skills. Although hers came along the lines of 'live in the woods with no regular contact with civilization', rather than a 'live a thousand miles from the nearest settlement' angle.

So she could shoot a deer, strip it and skin it and turn it into useful things like food and boots and buttons, whereas most girls of her day and age were limited to nuking a frozen burrito, if that.

Burritos were not her thing. If you'd wanted one of those she'd direct you to go ask Xander, who could whip one up in the classic style in no time at all. But she could cook venison to perfection, spiced about a thousand different ways using natural herbs, roast just about any kind of meat just as well, make her own breads and cheeses, pies and pastries, and sew just about anything you could name (although she now had a rather notable preference for green in her attire).

Actually, Amy had quite a bit to say about the disparity of domestic skills between what she now knew and what she'd once had, and had been heard more than once to grumble along the lines of, "All they know how to do is spend money," in reference to girls like Cordelia and her Cordettes.

Unlike Xander, her training did not focus on training horses, raising herds, or how to manage a farm. Such things were not a concern for the Outlaws of Sherwood (except, perhaps poaching them from rich nobles).

However, what she could do that he couldn't was make her own musical instruments. They were in the medieval style, which meant hand-carved wood instead of silver and brass, but she could still turn out reliably delightful flutes, hornpipes, recorders, harps and other varieties of strings, woodwinds and horns, many of which were rare or obsolete by modern standards.

She could even, to everyone's surprise, craft her own pipe organs.

The band of Merry Men had taken what she'd known of music and expanded that to where she was amazingly versatile, and especially well versed in what were to everyone else long lost styles.

Nor was Amy being stingy about her newfound knowledge.

Robin Hood and his crowd had lived through the early beginnings of the High Medieval Music period.

Since creating musical manuscripts was very expensive, due to the high cost of parchment, and the huge amount of time necessary for a scribe to copy it all down, only wealthy institutions were able to create written music, which they did sparingly, and very little of which survived to the present time.

Those institutions primarily included the Catholic church and its subsidiaries, such as monasteries. Being churches, it was mostly sacred music being preserved by them. Those surviving manuscripts did not reflect much of the popular music of the time. Due to difference in notation, reconstruction of even the music that did survive in manuscripts, especially before the 12th century, was almost entirely a matter of conjecture.

Friar Tuck had given her access to what was practiced in the monasteries of their day, while Alan-a-Dale gave her the popular folk as well as court music. So Amy had a repertoire of period music unequaled in modern collections. The modern samples didn't even come close.

But Amy also knew the modern notational styles from what she'd memorized before, so she could easily record this in a preservable form.

The people of England back in those days considered a hundred miles an truly impressive distance. Their variety did not come through radio, or through too many wandering players as the society was not rich enough to support them. Their variety all came through what performers they had being extremely versatile, and the performers had to keep people entertained or not get paid, so they diligently acquired repertoires that would be incalculably large by modern standards. And every one of them was a generalist.

Heck, Bach created at least one totally new composition every week over most of his career, yet during his lifetime he wasn't famous as a composer, only as an exceptional organist. Of course he was also required to direct choirs, write music for them, teach and tune a small orchestra to perform, conduct, and himself handled many instruments.

The fact is, this sort of load was not considered unusual for the time.

Amy could perform hundreds of songs on war, chivalry and courtly love. She could recite more histories than were in their books and do it in classic poem or sung in ballad format, and was expert on dozens of instruments, including lute, wooden flute, trombone and dulcimer, also organ, fiddle, and simple trumpets. But Amy wanted all the Scoobies able to play any instrument in a full symphony orchestra, both modern and medieval styles; and, when it came down to it, they weren't far from having begun that many instruments in the modern family already.

Of course, as they were discussing what more to add, there were moments that were purely Scooby.

"I didn't know a euphonium was a brass instrument. Look, here's a picture of one, and another of them being used in a marching band." Willow enthused.

Marcie leaned over her shoulder to look, commenting on the picture, "Looks like the marching guys carry their euphoniums in big sacks."

Xander nodded sagely. "That's probably for the best. You wouldn't want to expose your euphoniums."

"Yeah, that almost sounds like an arrestable offense: 'he did willfully, and with malice aforethought, expose his euphonium in public'." Jesse snarked.

"It's just a small tuba," Marcie shot back.

Jesse turned to Xander. "Isn't it usually the guy saying size doesn't matter? Yet here she is, defending her tuba, as if being of insufficient girth..."

A pair of screams lit up the night from outside.

"I'm going to have to come back to this joke. It was too funny to miss for a simple life or death emergency," Jesse commented to himself, the others having already sped from the room in response to the screams.

I O I O I

In an odd sort of symmetry to their first sighting of creatures of the night, it was a group of seven vampires attacking a pair of female joggers. The girl joggers (they looked college age) had thought they'd been protected by going buddy-system and carrying pepper spray.

Just shows how wrong you can be.

One of the vampires was of Mexican extraction and LIKED the taste of pepper spray, and was heard to be mumbling, "Man, I need some chips. Why do people tease me like this, giving me the pepper without the chips?"

Meanwhile his friends had the joggers well in hand.

One of the girls was already bent over backwards, her neck exposed, body held in the grip of her attackers while her friend looked on, helpless in the grasp of others, and forced to watch as the lead vampire of this little pack lowered his fangs teasingly slow toward the jogger with the exposed neck.

Xander was out and among them before the rest of the Scoobies had even seen what was going on.

The whip, in the hands of an expert, strikes like lightning, and Xander was a true expert.

Two strikes had cut a cross into the cheek of the lead vampire, not only causing him to forget all about the girl he was slowly about to bite, but giving him an instant's distress more than the mere wound would qualify for. But Xander was already whipping hands and feet of the vampires, slowing them down by cutting through shoes to sting feet, and causing them to drop the girls out of stung hands.

He was also robbing the vamps quite adroitly, cutting open pockets to spill out wallets while yanking off chains and other jewelry. And robbing them was not only good for money, it distracted and distressed his targets.

As the two joggers stumbled away Xander made his first kill of the evening, cutting off the head of a freshly robbed vampire, whereupon his cheap, ten dollar sword stamped out of pot metal in Pakistan promptly broke off at the hilt, snapping off where the tiny, rat-tail tang entered the crossguard.

And as suddenly as that Xander was the one in danger. While the whip was excellent for confusing or annoying, it had little in the way of lethal power against creatures that healed so fast. And without the ability to finish his confused enemies off, his advantage of surprise was lost and confusion was not the best shield against creatures so much more powerful than he was.

That didn't stop him from using it to what best advantage he could afford, however, and he quickly switched from stinging to more debilitating targets, whipping eyes and faces, striking tendons, and other, less-friendly places.

Like groin shots.

The two girl joggers were in full-on 'panicked and stupid' mode, not getting the point that someone was trying to rescue them. Brains already shut down by fear, all they perceived was more violence going on around them. That meant they clutched each other and cried, shutting down right in the center of the danger zone, making no effort to reach safety.

Of course, being ignorant of the night life, they probably couldn't recognize safety if they saw it.

Meanwhile Amy was ransacking Xander's house for a bow. But those had all been left at Uncle Rory's shop, where they did all of their archery practice. So she'd started looking for the next best thing, any weapon of any sort, but the group had been so focused on learning they were startlingly short on practicals. All their money so far had gone towards more learning, books and classes. They had not yet laid in an arsenal of weapons.

That was going to change first thing in the morning if she had any say in it.

Willow stepped out onto the lawn and began hosing with her pencil launcher. Xander immediately dove to the side to grant her a clear field of fire, and she diligently hosed down the vamps, stabbing three of them so full of flaming crosses they looked like pincushions, immobilizing those with pain until the fires caught and they dusted.

Two other vamps, seeing the danger she presented, rushed at her, only to be tripped by Xander's whip. Willow's eyes were wide with the unfamiliar feeling of standing up to a very real and immediate danger, but despite her terror she obligingly hosed the prone vamps until they, too, dusted from flames.

Then the hopper on her stake machinegun ran out.

The last remaining vamp, hiding from the whip behind the huddled pair of kneeling joggers, clutching each other and wailing in their fright, saw this and proved he had a survival instinct by making a dash for freedom. Xander's whip caught him by the ankle, bringing him down to fall prone, face down on the pavement...

... just in time for another group of vampires to appear, brought by the sweet, sweet sounds of delicious mortal girls in mindless terror and misery.

Seeing another four vamps appear when he was already short on weaponry gave Xander a bit of the shakes. The whip was a tool for amplifying confusion and used by ambush or surprise gave a terrifying advantage, but up against aware and prepared opponents it was... less so.

Xander resolved to start hiding a wooden stake in his boot, or something, and perhaps a few of those garlic bombs. He wasn't even carrying any holy water. More focused on theory than practicals.

That was going to change.

They also needed to work on the penetrating power of those pencil launchers. Obviously, they needed either a better engine or drive wheels, because the stakes didn't get far enough into the chest cavity to hit the heart. Burning them to death while crippling the vamps in pain was still good, but staking them outright would be better, faster, and use fewer stakes per vampire.

But, for a first use in combat, it hadn't done so bad. The US Army had some embarrassing failures with their weapons the first times they showed up on a field of battle, and that was after exhaustive testing.

The last surviving vampire out of the first group limped over to the new arrivals, clutching his groin and split open eye while pointing back to Xander and talking.

"That guy sucks! We need to torture him! And, hey, you guys got any chips?"

Willow had already 'Eeeped' over her empty stake machinegun and dodged back into the heavily warded house.

Xander called up the pooka of his many times great grandfather's horse, Tornado, and mounted in one swift movement. Vampires could outrace a human on foot, but being mounted gave him the speed advantage, and these guys had seen enough that it would be terribly inconvenient to the Scoobies' plans if they were to get away.

Luckily, the lure of two, fresh, wailing female victims and one lone defender was enough to draw in the four new vamps, and the fifth, the survivor of the last group, came advancing cautiously behind them.

Right into an ambush set by a girl trained by the Outlaws of Sherwood. Amy, Jesse and Marcie all opened up with their own stake machineguns while Cathy let loose a bolt of fire. With their attention all focused on Xander, the vamps were caught unprepared and the whole group peppered with flaming crosses, paralyzing them with pain until the flames caught and it was over. Xander chased down one lagging behind, the only one able to flee, tripped him up with his whip so Tornado could stomp his chest flat, then whipped him into little bits to keep him down and broken until Amy came up and hosed the downed vamp with a few sprays out of her stake machinegun.

They were really going to have to work on the penetrating power of those, maybe get the rocket option they'd discussed working. Also, he'd have to remember to carry his own one of those, even limited they were still useful, and better than the pistol Zorro had carried for backup.

Riding back to his house, Xander dismissed his pooka on the lawn and helped Willow get the two joggers inside while Amy led the others back.

He really had to hand it to his ancestor, Tornado was the best horse he'd ever heard of, and a pooka ideal for the present fight. It could not be killed, like an ordinary mount, could not be destroyed like a car or motorcycle, did not require expensive feed or repairs, and, unlike just about anything else, it left no evidence of its passage.

In a world that cataloged everything, that made files on identifying marks and tracked and traced everything from tire marks to eyewitness reports on breed or color, and especially hung unique tags like license plates from just about everything, anonymity was a bit hard to come by. But a pooka looked exactly like a living horse, and anyone searching Sunnydale for a black horse so they could find the man riding it wasn't going to find him, as the pooka was only around when he needed it.

He didn't even have a way to store an ordinary horse.

Shaken out of his reminisces, Xander finished helping Amy's group clean up the stray pencils, grabbed the wallets and jewelry, then went inside to help Willow convince the two girls to NOT call the police to report this attack!

No, they didn't want to go on official reports as having rescued anyone, thank you. The police chief was in the mayor's pockets, and the mayor was the bad guy in this situation. It would be less damaging to their cause to send him a postcard with all of their pictures on it and a cheery 'We're killing your vampires!' than to have a police report filled out.

Finally, the conflict got resolved by Cathy putting the two joggers asleep with a spell.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Yes, the Ancestor Guide spell delivers one more hero into their midst. Yes, Willow and the others are all eager to get to theirs, although many will be surprised, and a few disappointed, as not everyone has ancestors who know skills useful for hunting vampires - well, perhaps not AS useful, you can't find anyone who doesn't have a soldier or two somewhere in their family tree.

But now with a second fighting type, they are ready to begin making the switch to a more active demon hunting profile, and there are going to be problems with that, naturally!


	17. Chapter 17

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Seventeen

by Lionheart

I O I O I

The little remote control car driving along the service tunnel network below the city of Sunnydale bore little enough resemblance to the toy it had been that morning. The plastic chassis had been replaced with a metal one, and other parts reinforced. The body, where it had been made up to look like a model of an actual car, had been stripped away entirely to be replaced by a couple-gallon jug of spring water like those kept in your fridge. Although the shape of this jug had been changed to better fit on the little vehicle, and the spigot transformed into a simple mister, releasing a constant cloud of fine spray around the little vehicle.

Only the fact that the contents of water tank had been blessed, making for a holy water sprayer that could deny an area around the little car to demons and vamps made the little thing interesting at all.

As it was, it drove down a memorized route on the service tunnel network and parked just outside a door that, to those in the know, led to one of the local vampire nests. Sitting there, it created a cloud that served as an area denial weapon to any vampires who might want to use that exit.

And, the fact that it was daylight outside meant those vampires inside were trapped. But, even had they known, why should they have cared? They were the predators of the darkness. No one would dare to invade their lair.

I O I O I

"What are these?" Xander pointed to a plate of chocolate frosted doughnuts with sprinkles.

"Baby carrots," Marcie answered.

Nodding, Xander picked up and started eating some.

"You'd think a warehouse would give them more space," Willow observed as she watched the normal looking house across the street through binoculars.

"Not close enough to the school. Ready access to your targets is a big deal for demons," Xander corrected softly. "They're lazy like that."

"Also not normal looking enough," Amy observed from an outlaw's perspective. "Avoiding tipping off your prey is most of the success of predators."

"Yeah," Jesse chuckled. "Can you just imagine them saying, 'Hello, little girl. Would you like to go into this cold, dark, empty warehouse with me?'"

"They have those," Xander shot his friend an amused glance. "But that's more of a vacation spot for vamps, a place to let their hair down and be big, nasty, scary monsters, or work on devilish plots in secret. This, an ordinary tract house, is more of a working location - it is, as you say, easier to invite chicks over to parties if you have a normal looking set of digs."

"Or for vampire chicks to entice hormonal guys over to their apartment. It works both ways," Amy observed, as the other trained professional there.

Marcie's cell phone rang and, having been anticipating this for a while, she answered it quickly. As the only one in the group with one of those devices, she'd been voted the defacto communications expert. Closing and pocketing the device after a short call, she shook her hair out of her face and informed the rest, "Jane just gave me a call and asked me to pick up milk at the store. That was the signal we'd worked out. The holy mist tank is in place."

The group nodded. The idea of codes that meant nothing to an enemy even if he could hear them was one Jesse had suggested, and they'd all agreed with as a good idea.

"Okay," Xander nodded. "Their escape is cut off. It's time to go to work."

I O I O I

The group had been holding surveillance in the Sunnydale Mobile Library, an RV-like vehicle that made the rounds to poorer neighborhoods offering the gift of reading to the underprivileged masses - in theory. Actually, no one would drive the thing, as demons hung out in the poorer neighborhoods of Sunnydale, and the last librarian to actually use the vehicle had been rather nastily gutted. So none of the current librarians would touch it.

So it was available as the Mobile Scooby Command Post. Cathy had loaned them the keys, assuring them no one would miss it; and she could refill the tank at the private gas stop for city vehicles (a place very good about asking no questions) and charge it to the library, which was practically the definition of turning a blind eye to strange goings on.

They would have used Amy's Volkswagen Bus, but it just wasn't ready yet. They'd gotten better with the car repair spells; restoring things from rust to like-new condition had progressed up from nuts and bolts through small parts to larger but still removable things like body panels and fenders. But no one in their group had the skill yet to be restoring either engine blocks or frame, and without those you didn't have much of a vehicle.

As a consequence, one of the next steps in that department was to be restoring piles of corroded wheel rims, as one of the largest objects they could presently do; and getting practice on those would lead them closer to doing the coveted engine blocks and frames.

But it also wasn't only rust removal, as they often had to be reshaping parts that'd been bent or broken. Thankfully not too many of them, but there were still some that had to be fixed with entirely different categories of repair spells that had, themselves, to be worked up from the basic cantrip level.

They'd only just begun to explore what was needed there, as they'd found their dream of having cheap classic cars impeded by other damage. Rust was an easy obstacle. These car bodies had been tossed in on top of each other, often dented or torn in the original demon attacks that'd left them without owners, or later joyriding, then otherwise damaged while in their rusted and useless states.

So they needed spells for welding metal and shaping it, things to fix cracks, chips, dents and so on in cylinder heads, bolts, frames, fenders and virtually everything else between the various junkers they were restoring.

Shaping was the real nightmare, as the precision required was amazing. If they didn't get a valve to within 5 ten thousandths of an inch it was going to bang itself to flinders. And they had to not only be able to shape such things, but accurately measure them so they knew they had the right shape, size, angle and whatever to create the precise part they were looking for. Even on welds to fix simple cracks, the finished part had to measure exactly right or it would not do the job it was meant for, and they had to be able to tell.

And, of course, for those measurements to mean anything, either before or after shaping, they had to be able to visualize complex shapes with extreme accuracy so they knew what they were doing, and that required a whole new category of mental enhancement spell, starting, as always, with a cantrip.

So, once again, they'd started to repair the small and simple stuff, and were working their ways up from there. They'd even taken to whacking small, easy to fix things with other small, easy to fix things so they could practice fixing both of them, just to get the extra repair spell time in.

Still, they were earning extra cash from Uncle Rory as their rust removal efforts begun producing stacks of restored nuts, bolts and other car parts out of his corroded junk just to get their needed practice in, and other parts began to be restored from dings and scrapes. Rory was very grateful, as he could use that stuff himself in his business.

Those were valuable parts. And, thanks to the Sunnydale Syndrome, he wasn't asking any questions about where or how they got them, only using them to increase the profits of his business (and consequently kicking some of the gain back to the Scoobies - a very welcome addition easing their present supply difficulties in the pocket change department).

Of course, eventually they had real hopes of even higher achievements, as once you've taken two halves of a manifold, then turned it into a manifold that works, it wasn't too much beyond that to take a lump of metal that wasn't a manifold and turn it into one. And from there, take raw metal and turn it into whatever you needed it to be. So once they had the precision they could be making replacement parts at need, so long as they knew what precise shape to turn their raw materials into. So it was a very eager group of Scoobies that practiced diligently to reach that state.

Of course, then you have another obstacle in the form of complex pieces. Not complex shapes, a manifold was a complex shape; but something like an alternator, where you have the casing, the shaft in the center, both of which have their own distinct metallurgy, then windings of the right number of the right thickness of the right conductivity, and all arranged in the right ways with sufficient insulation (an insulation that can stand up to heat, current, vibration, and yet still not take up too much space and crowd out the room you need for the wires). Then there are magnets that have to be the right strength and in the right positions, and so on.

Crafting something like that was a nightmare, and they'd far rather buy those sorts of parts to replace them normally. Of course, Xander was all for going through the effort anyway, as once they could fabricate or repair those kinds of parts, they could begin to look into that technomancy stuff with a real eye toward success.

The others paled at the work involved in what he was suggesting, then went looking through used parts catalogs to buy what they still needed.

Thankfully not all of their cars needed those complex parts repaired, but some did. Luckily, they had an advantage in that they were working on older cars and did not have to deal with circuit boards and oxygen sensors and stuff like that.

Glass was going to be a problem, and one they'd rather solve themselves than part with yet more of their rather limited supply of cash for windshields and windows. Although that might just end up happening, as they hadn't even begun to work on spells for that just yet, and safety glass was far away.

The corvette's fiberglass body had also posed some... interesting problems. And repair of that was more closely related to the sewing charms they'd developed than the rest of the spells in their 'car repair toolkit'.

Still, they were at the point where they could reassemble what they had and it would at least look nice, even if it wouldn't run or be very sturdy. They'd pulled out the interiors and restored seat frames and springs, then done enough on sewing cantrips that the upholstery in their vehicles was now as good as it had ever been. Leather could be replaced just as easily. Restoring the rubber parts was a bit more tricky, as they didn't know where to start on anti-corroding the stuff. It didn't act like rust, and the ancient Japanese sorcerer who'd written their book had no tips to offer.

They were presently torn between the easy solution of casting new parts out of rubber (using spells, obviously), or continuing to research ways to try and restore the originals. Knowing how to restore rubber would make them more versatile in the long run, but they also had more hope of getting rubber cast into the right shapes in time for school.

And, as a last resort, they could always buy replacements. But that was really not their preferred option. Things were tight enough as it was.

Still, though they might not be able to do everything magically themselves, they were close.

Xander's 57 chevy was in much better shape than the others, lacking fewer main parts, as it had been given to him as an actual vehicle of sorts, and so at least theoretically able to run for a bit before dying completely. So it'd be the first to be completely restored, but the others were coming along nicely.

And, between their own efforts and some parts bought out of hard earned cash, the gang had every hope of being behind the wheels of some excellent condition classic cars come the end of summer vacation.

They just couldn't use them as rolling, mobile hideouts yet.

I O I O I

The quintet of Xander, Jesse, Amy, Marcie and Willow moved into action. Each person carried two fully loaded stake machineguns, and they'd doubled the size of the hopper, even if they hadn't had time yet to fiddle around with more powerful engines or better drive wheels.

That was a very important item on the agenda, they'd just hadn't gotten to it yet.

Xander signaled Jesse and the pair of them split up to go around opposite sides of the house to meet up again at the back, while Amy led the other two girls to do their work standing out front, disguised as a 'stand and gossip' session girls often get engaged in on sidewalks.

The activity this screen was to disguise was a simple one. Probably the first time sewing cantrips had ever been used offensively in combat, they used quick, neat cutting spells, made as a substitute for scissors, on the fabric of the closed curtains where it held onto the loops.

Instant result: dropped draperies. When drapes drop, sunlight pours in.

The trio of girls handled the front of the house while Xander and Jesse did both sides, then the back, not only dropping the drapes and cutting the cords on blinds so they left the vamps completely without window coverings, but they used those household cleaning charms they'd become so expert at to scour the window panes squeaky clean as they passed by, making sure there was no dirt, dust or grime (or paint) to obscure the healthy, cleansing sunlight flooding into the vampire nest.

The speed of this attack came as a completely unexpected surprise to the vampires inside, many burning quite badly as they lunged for shadier parts of the dwelling, a few even dusting as those, too, got the window treatments removed and sunlight once again started pouring in.

There were shrieks and scuffles as spots of shelter from the dreaded sunlight got fought over, but the house was well soundproofed. It had to be, considering the results of a typical vampire revel or feast. A few vamps got the escape door into the city service tunnels opened and slammed it just as quickly, hacking and choking on the holy water mist that had poured in.

In moments, every vampire in the house had crammed themselves in closets, under stairs, or hiding under beds or behind sofas. One had even crammed himself into the kitchen fridge to escape burning to death by sunlight, wire racks and used takeout boxes having been pulled out and tossed aside, scattering leftovers across the floor in his haste to get inside, under cover.

The two groups of Scoobies smiled at each other: Objective achieved. A few high fives got exchanged as a result of having crammed the demons of the night into tiny, awkward spaces, depriving the fearsome creatures the space they needed to use their superior strength and speed.

The next part was the most dangerous one, though.

The creatures inside were now as helpless as active vampires ever got. They were crammed into tight spaces of darkness, surrounded by deadly sunlight. But they were still every bit the deadly monsters of destruction they'd always been. Get too close and they'd risk a burned arm to reach out and destroy you. Demons were frequently of the mindset of 'if I must die then at least I'll take you with me'. So, even trapped and cornered, they'd come out to fight if they felt that by doing so they could take down their attackers with them.

Also, come nightfall, they'd not only get out of their entrapment, they'd be mad, out for revenge. People would suffer for their humiliation.

So the objective was not to stop with humiliating them, but to destroy them while they were entrapped, and to do that the Scoobies had to go in there.

Of course, none of them were going to be stupid about that.

As Jesse had pointed out: the Scoobies were totally weak. Even after all they'd done to improve themselves, buffing up their bodies and learning how to fight, most of them could never stand up against a vampire in a fistfight.

But who said they had to fight fair?

This wasn't about shooting gripping action scenes, or showing off how tough they were. The Scoobies were out to exterminate a nest of vicious killers with the smallest possible chance of getting hurt themselves in the process.

So they relied upon one of those things Sun Tzu taught: strike your enemy's weakness with your own strength. And another that Van Hellsing had written, that constant study and research was the only true advantage a hunter had over the powerful but complacent demons of the night.

Earlier the previous day, when he wasn't out buying musical instruments to learn, Xander had spent a furious few hours to finish typing out the 'Hunter's Encyclopedia of the Night' as one of the thinnest books on demonology, and thus able to be finished in time for the latest session. So it got included, too.

Even for the McNally family girls, once again on the assumption that knowing about your enemy was the best way to avoid having it messily devouring you.

That same theory applied here. The well-informed demon hunter was the one type that lived longer than it took to consume a hamburger - after their luck ran out.

Front and back, the Scoobies used minor unlocking cantrips to open windows and toss in water bottles outfitted with the same mist sprayer caps they'd used on the remote control car, that steadily began filling rooms with clouds of holy water mist.

A handful of vampires lunged out from behind couches and sofas and dashed for better cover, while a few howled and burned, having noplace better to go.

Jesse and Xander, on the back lawn, pulled out a full-length mirror on a pivot and directed it so the big thing reflected a large square of light into a rear window, amplifying the sunlight already entering so it was almost direct.

Then Xander grinned, pulled a ball out of his pocket and tossed it in, catching it with a levitation cantrip as he did so, such that the ball never hit the ground, instead floating directly into the beam of reflected light.

Revealing that it was a disco ball.

"Man, that's just tactless. Killing them with a disco ball grenade?" Jesse mourned. "No class at all."

Xander shrugged happily. "Hundreds of mirrors to scatter sunshine in every possible direction, in unavoidable patterns as it spins. How do you get better than that?"

Indeed, the demons inside that had inadequate cover began to howl and scream.

Jesse considered, then shrugged, relenting. "Ok. That kind of effectiveness can make even the tacky become cool."

Using spells to move the disco ball about while Jesse kept the mirror's patch of sunlight reflected on it, they shone it into every part of the room, clearing out those vampires that had only direct blockage of the sunlight.

Then the Scoobies floated in another mirror.

This one they used as a periscope, levitating it around to show them what lurked in all of the corners. Once they were sure the room was clear, Xander entered to check those things that couldn't be checked by mirror, flipping up sofas to check underneath and so on.

The big living room of the house extended into a dining area in the back, so that half of the house was all one wall-less space from front wall to rear, and it was now open on three sides to windows. There were not many vampires hiding there, and Xander was able to use spells out of their car repair toolkit to pop the pins out of hinges and disassemble doorknobs so he could flick open the tightly packed hall closet and get the guy out of the fridge, fighting them as necessary until they dusted, and thus clearing the room completely.

At that point the rest of the Scoobies entered.

This was perhaps not the wisest thing to do, but it was a necessity. As this kind of attack highlighted, catching your enemies by surprise gave you a terrifying advantage, able to break down whatever defenses they had, strike at their weak spots and generally hound them into oblivion.

And demons could do that to humans just as easily as hunters did it to them. They had to hide their identities if they didn't want to be on the receiving end of attacks like this one, and that meant not hanging out on the lawn where just anyone could see you conducting your attack.

Toward that end they would be working on disguises. At present they had settled on the expedient of wigs and makeup, but they'd have to do better in the future to have any success at this long term.

As they entered to get out of sight of the neighbors (should anyone be looking) Xander met a terrified Willow's eyes and smile comfortingly. Her relief was palpable, and trembled less where she held her weapons closely.

Aside from Xander and Amy, who had their own preferred weapons, everyone there carried a stake machinegun in one hand, and a large wooden cross made of two by twos notched and lashed together in the other - a cross that was also a club that you could beat vampires with if needed.

Not much if they came across anything but a vampire, but it was what they'd had available given the limited materials and time before this little raid.

They had prepared for better down the line.

Using the contents of the wallets taken from the vampires the previous night, and a Post Office box Cathy agreed to get them in LA when she mailed the stuff, they'd sent off an order for full-tang carbon steel swords for all of them out of a catalog Xander had been looking through.

It wasn't anywhere close to Damascus or Toledo blades, but it was a far cry better than pot metal out of Pakistan with tiny little rat-tail tangs. Besides, it was what they could afford.

Two weeks ago they would've spent that haul on books or classes. Today it was going toward halfway decent swords. Really, it was a miracle that the Pakistani blade hadn't broken off in Xander's hands before that one fight. It was not made to be a sword, or be used as a sword. It was made to look like a sword and hang on somebody's wall somewhere.

Actually, the idea of hanging weapons on walls appealed to all of them at this juncture. They could pretend they were there for decoration or conversation pieces, but really that just put them ready to grab when you needed one.

They'd be outfitting all of their homes with standby weapons as decoration as soon as they could. But, for now, the limits of what they could afford were the bare minimum basics of arming themselves with a decent sword apiece. And the Madison family discretionary budget was already gone to pay for classes, or loaned out to eager youngsters for buying car parts they didn't have the confidence of making magically themselves before school.

That was part of what this raid was intended to accomplish: spoil a few more vampires of their ill-gotten goods as a way of tending their war chest and eventually being able to afford far more respectable vampire hunting gear.

It was also their first real strike as a directed group of vampire hunters, and last night had convinced them that it was time to switch from their passive stance to more active roles.

It would, if nothing else, teach them where they were deficient in either equipment or training. And hopefully showing them any weakness they'd been overlooking would help to correct them as they prepared to do this for real.

Nobody kidded themselves that they were truly ready now. They'd barely begun most of their classes, and were only a little more than a month into their training. Even with all the spells and enhancement tricks they'd been using, they were still a long way before they could go full-time, active demon hunters. But they'd also gone far enough they could no longer excuse sitting back and passively doing nothing as people in their home town got killed.

While Amy had a bow slung over her back, and a big kitchen knife tucked into her belt, the real weapon of the day was the fiddle she held in her hands. A lute would've felt less awkward to her in a combat situation, but no luck finding one of those available for sale at anywhere close to the authenticity desired and in the price range their constricted budgets required. So today it was a fiddle, although she was working on making her own instruments soon.

The moment she started to play there came some aggrieved thrashings from the various closets and other hiding places around the house.

Thus marked and highlighted, Xander went around their immediate area flushing out evil monsters into the light, using his whip to hobble and impede them while other Scoobies finished them off with a combination of pencil launchers and sunlight.

I O I O I

"Wow! That was incredibly easy!" Marcie crowed, alight with the triumph of their success. Sliding into her seat at the kitchen table, she held up a bottle of all-natural fruit juices to Xander, and moments later was popping the tab on the can of soda it had become, taking a sip of the delightful fizz.

"You shouldn't be too surprised." Jesse's mom explained, "That wasn't meant to be a fight. It was supposed to be a slaughter. When one side is prepared and catches the other side by surprise when they aren't, the result is usually a massacre - and that's what this was."

"Especially when weakness are well known and you can properly abuse them!" Jesse crowed, helping himself to an undefended cookie.

His mother began to lay out snack plates for the returning heroes.

"Now marines, or other highly trained soldiers," she told them, "caught in that type of situation would adapt and improvise. They'd make the most of what they could and turn things back on their attackers as much as possible, or create a way out if they couldn't find one."

Xander grinned, then completed the thought for her, "But demons are used to having things go their way. They're not prepared to think like the underdog. They're lazy and complacent, used to their powers solving fights for them.

I O I O I

As the evening set, Mayor Wilkins stood by the crime scene waiting for the police chief to inform him what had gone on.

A major vampire nest had been destroyed. That was troubling. What made this into an emergency was the fact that they had no idea who'd done it.

"Nothing," the short, smelly, half-demon police detective in charge declared to both of the bigwigs lingering about his crime scene. "Whoever did this had some aura cloaking spells up. No magical traces linger."

"What normal clues have ya got?" the police chief angrily demanded.

"Well, we've got two dozen piles of dust. So we can be fairly sure our boys didn't decide to take off for Jamaica or something like that," the detective snarked, then cringed as the chief's eyes grew red and slitted in anger.

Mayor Wilkins put a genial restraining hand on the man's arm to stop the outburst from getting louder or more violent.

The half-demon detective appreciated the gesture, and continued in a more subservient tone, "Curtains were cut down, then left that way. Traces of holy water on some of the downstairs furniture. Other than that, people who did this didn't even use enough magic to levitate a pencil. Job's clean."

The mayor shot a genial smile to the detective. "Well, I can certainly appreciate a person willing to exterminate their enemies without making a mess. But that leaves us very little to go on, doesn't it?"

"Did anyone see anything?" the police chief demanded of his detective.

"In THIS town?" the half demon snarked back, then cringed as his superior's fangs appeared. "No, boss! But you oughta know, they coulda marched an entire football team in there, complete with cheerleaders and a band, and no one woulda seen nothin!"

"An unfortunate consequence of the spells and enchantments necessary to maintain this town as an ideal feeding trough, I'm afraid," the mayor admitted without losing either his cheer or calm. "Spells to prevent the cattle from getting excited also prevent us learning useful information from them. Pity."

The man thought for a moment, before snapping his fingers in an idea. "Well, no help for it. Keep a look out, and invite a few sunlight resistant demons to abide with our vampire friends in their nests until we get this group located and destroyed."

"Course, boss," the half-demon snarked.

The mayor turned to his police chief, gesturing to the detective as he left their presence, "Oh, and have him executed at once. I cannot stand his level of impoliteness."

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Well, not quite on time for Christmas, but I hope you like it anyway.


	18. Chapter 18

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Eighteen

by Lionheart

I O I O I

"What are you doing?" Xander peered over Willow's shoulder.

The girl blushed as she continued typing. "Making another entry into the Hunter's Encyclopedia of the Night."

"Oh?" the boy blinked, shocked at her modifying a book.

"Yes." The girl nodded, chewing on her lower lip while staring at the screen. "I also need to expand the vampire entry, the original didn't cover some of the important details on them - it is incomplete, after all."

"True." Xander pondered. He knew quite a few facts, intricate details about the various demons that infested this place, but most of the best stuff he'd learned from the ghosts of their victims, not any of the books he'd read.

"Hey, scoot over. I have a few things I'd like to add, too."

I O I O I

Two more vampire nests had fallen, these to molotov cocktails tossed in windows during daytime while a 'sprinkler bot' was blocking off the sewer entrance. It was neither elegant nor pretty, but it had the salutary effect of wiping out several more vampires, even if the teens didn't get to loot the bodies of valuables to expand their ready cash or operational budget.

Cutting down the vampire population was a good part of a demon hunter's role. And they all appreciated how much safer the town they lived in would have been if those losses stuck.

Instead, new demons and vampires were moving into Sunnydale that evening, making it VERY hard for the group to feel any progress had been made.

Still, between the three nests wiped out, they had destroyed over a hundred vampires. That actually put them among a very few groups to have lived long enough to make so many kills.

Of course, most groups didn't live in Sunnydale, where one could hardly heave a brick without hitting something supernatural.

Having hit some nests, Xander's ghost-obtained tactical knowledge was now slightly out of date, as presumably the baddies would be setting up at new digs. So, to compensate for the changing situation, rather than stupidly do nothing for fear of invalidating their knowledge, they simply made efforts to acquire new data to update for a changing situation.

And for that, they made recourse to the spells donated by Amy's mother for getting themselves a familiar.

This was actually one of those areas of magic that was irreducibly complex. It could not be broken down in littler bits and still function, so there was no point in trying to manufacture a tutorial cantrip version of it. Throckmorton hadn't liked to admit that such magic existed, and he'd been pretty firm that there had to be some way to break those down anyway, but he'd never found it personally, and the teens didn't bother. What they had worked, and there was no point bending their brains around a problem Throckmorton himself couldn't find an answer to.

They weren't theoretical mages. They were a group of kids trying to get by in a very deadly dangerous situation. They hadn't the luxury of trying to beat their heads against a problem looking for a 'perfect' solution when they had an answer already that worked just fine.

So, by previous agreement, they bound and deployed familiars - owls for night watch because it was such a good idea, but parrots for day watch work as well.

Xander would have preferred hawks as more inconspicuous, but Marcie knew through a friend who worked at an animal hospital of several parrots that were going to be destroyed - the usual fate of pets of the recently deceased in Sunnydale (when the local night life didn't eat them, that is). Possessions went to Goodwill, and any animals that weren't eaten got put down.

Since parrots were popular pets and owls weren't, and since budgets were tight enough they had to take what was cheap, so they went with the free birds because free was a good price.

I O I O I

"Mom?" Marcie went into her home and popped into a chair at the dining room table, picking up an apple. After a moment of concentration and a few whispered words and gestures, it had become a slice of apple pie - much more tasty!

"Yes, dear?" the woman didn't even look up from her fashion magazine. Really! Marcie scowled. What did it take to get some attention around here? You'd think she'd turned invisible or something! Things were better before her dad disappeared. They used to think he'd run off on them. Now, knowing about the demon underworld and the nightlife, Marcie wasn't so sure.

Squashing that thought as unproductive, she asked her distant mother, "I've been wondering, why do girls want to be cheerleaders?"

The woman paused what she was doing and thought about it. "I guess because they are like High School royalty."

"Royalty, huh?" Marcie chewed a forkful of apple pie.

Her mom actually laid the fashion magazine aside for a moment. "Well, it might be different at your school, but that's the way it was at mine. Plus, it answers that 'am I pretty' question most young girls have."

'Yeah', Marcie nodded. She could really see that. Sometimes... well, up until Xander and the rest of the Scoobs, she'd wondered if boys ever saw her at all. Now she was swimming in attention.

It felt wonderful.

Still, it was nice to have her mom look at her, too. But before she could rush on to the next question in a bid to keep her attention for a few seconds more, her mother surprised her by asking, "What brought this question on?"

Marcie shrugged, knowing she had parental notice for this second and loving it. "Oh, I made a couple of friends, and the girls are all taking cheerleading lessons from one of their mothers, who seems really excited about it. So I wanted to know if I was missing something."

"You could be," her mother admitted. "Cheerleading is all about being the center of attention."

And that, for Marcie, pretty much decided that.

I O I O I

Amy scowled at what she was working on, feeling very dissatisfied with her tools.

The ancient Egyptians had a form of the clarinet. In fact, very few things were truly modern. There were exceptions, of course. The Saxophone for one was, actually, a very modern instrument, developed in the mid-19th century by an Adolphe Sax, a flute player and clarinetist, in an attempt to get the projection of a brass instrument and the mobility of a woodwind. It was one of the very few successful attempts to make an entirely new instrument.

But most things had existed in one form or another for a very long time. The details changed as people worked with new materials, got the urge to play around with the tones or tried to make fingering the notes easier, like lute to mandolin to guitar. And even the saxophone owed most of its key properties to other instruments the inventor played, and combined into a single form.

Just like soda makers would play around with the percentage of caffeine and then claim to be releasing an entirely new drink. There was nothing new in it, the proportions were just slightly altered.

A lot mixing like that occurred.

The church music of the Medieval period displayed a high degree of technical virtuosity because the monks who largely sang it had a great deal of free time to work on getting the details right, and it gave their abbot or bishop bragging rights over the other monks if theirs could be viewed as superior.

Humans had very simple drives that had not changed since their creation.

On the other hand, popular music of the day was not written for the purpose of showing off the skill of the composer or performers. No, it had an entirely different purpose that had nothing to do with showing off or impressing people - it was meant to be fun to play and listen to.

Often they were very simple pieces, as far as the technical virtuosity involved. A man could whistle them more often than not, which was really the point. That was music that could stick to your ribs and help keep you entertained throughout the day or week after hearing it, and it contained a high proportion of what the modern parlance often calls an 'audio virus'.

Simple music played for a people who had simple needs. Then, as now, it was easy to find effete snobs to sneer at it as 'not being up to their standards', but really what they were saying was they chose not to be entertained by it because they felt they could afford or deserved better.

Of course, as a minor tangent, the world is full of single people who could have married, but felt they deserved better than the opportunities they got - just because you feel you deserve something does not mean the universe is obligated to step up and satisfy your wants.

No, it is often a better lesson to draw satisfaction from what you had, rather than sneer at it and throw it away and insist that somebody else get you something better - an attitude that is most often described as spoiled.

A person that actually deserved better music would be the one who sat down and wrote it. Anyone else is basically sitting down and daring the universe to fit their needs or they'll be unhappy - and most of those people spend most of their lives unhappy.

They also give rise to the phenomena of 'doing better than the Jones', which is most often a pointless exercise in frustration for all involved.

No, there was a very old phrase, "Those who are not satisfied by what they have would not be satisfied by having what they would like to have." So, really, it was pointless to even try. Let them be unhappy. That was their goal anyway. The whole point of daring the universe to 'give me better or I'll be unhappy' was holding yourself for ransom to a set of natural laws that doesn't care, and the natural result of that is more or less continual unhappiness until they either wise up or die.

Given that thought, Amy felt ashamed of herself for sitting there pouting over her tools. So they weren't what she'd trained on, so what? Worst case she'd make a flawed instrument or two before working out how to do things right by the unfamiliar set, and it was a case of either do it and learn or sit there feeling miserable without even trying.

So she picked up the woodworking tools and began to make herself a lute.

I O I O I

Faith looked at the woman who was to be her new guardian: Jana Kalderash

"So... stuck with each other, huh?" Jana put on a happy face.

The woman who was going to be Faith's Watcher couldn't stop babbling, "Well, she had another guardian, but he went gallivanting off to go hang out with the Tauric race for something." She thought a bit before adding, with a smile, "Somehow I don't think Mikael is going to enjoy his apprenticeship once the old bull works out some of the reasons behind it."

"Guy was a jerk anyway." Faith shrugged dismissively.

I O I O I

Willow awoke, not feeling the best she ever had in her life.

All her friends pressed around her eagerly. Giving her a moment to mumble and collect herself was almost more than their curiosity could bear.

"So, who was it? Einstein? Rabbi Loew? Anyone we'd know?" Amy blurted, becoming the designated spokesgirl by virtue of having spoken first.

"No." Willow shook her head softly, rising with a grace those who knew her could tell she hadn't possessed twelve hours ago. "You wouldn't know her. She wasn't famous."

"So," Marcie bit her lip to conceal a squeal. "Who was it, and what did she teach you?"

"What did she do, anyway?" Jesse playfully assaulted her in his eagerness.

Willow very calmly and deliberately gave her answer, "She made gingerbread houses."

There came a vast moment of silence.

"So?" Jesse blurted out at last. "You can buy 'em come Christmas time at the store for, like, twenty bucks."

"No," Willow shook her head softly, not daring to look any of them in the eye. "The Hansel and Gretal kind - the sort you live in. Four bedroom split level with a living room, two car garage and a kitchen with a cage out back for fattening children. That sort of place."

Jane McNally, who'd been preparing to set out treats in the background, fainted, falling backward amid a clatter of falling tableware.

I O I O I

Later, after reviving the head of the McNally family, they were all arranged in the living room getting comfortable while Willow gave them all a run-down on what her ancestor guide spell had given her.

The customary Willow-babble was absent as the delicate and refined young lady she'd become explained to them what she'd learned. "It's a weird style of magic in that the older you get the worse it works for you. Normally those who practice it have a conundrum: by the time they are old enough to know anything significant in this style, it's too late for it to do anything for them."

"All styles of magic have drawbacks like that, I'm afraid." Xander answered her with a grin. "Throckmorton's has the ridiculously insane workload before you can do even the most minor and trivial things. Demonology has that whole certain doom, enslavement, and the utter and complete ruination of your soul aspect to it, and so on. Fortunately, most of those also have work arounds. Nobody would study demonology if they felt they couldn't somehow cheat the system, after all. And due to Mr. Mage Dude we've discovered that hypnotic memorization of the Codex of Magical Thought bypassed all of that tedious workload nicely."

He couldn't stop grinning.

"It's the same here." Willow returned calmly. "One of the things this style allows you to do is stop aging, under certain circumstances. It's not immortality, it's just a... well, I guess you could call it a pause button. The movie of your life is still playing, it just isn't running out of film."

"What's the catch? There's always a catch." Cathy learned forward to ask, suddenly VERY intent on this discussion.

"Yes, and in this case the catch is you can never leave a building you have magically set up to be your lair." The redhead met her gaze. "Only inside do you stay youngish. Go out and you start growing older again at a normal pace. But given that, in this style, every minute you get older your magic gets weaker..."

"Yes, it's a tidy little puzzle, isn't it? So, did Granny the Gingerbread Witch have any solutions?" Marcie grew eager.

"Well, first let me say ten to twelve is the ideal age for this style. After that you start to grow weaker. At thirteen, nearing fourteen, we're all still pretty potent in it. Just no ruling kingdoms for us, though."

"So, if we taught this to Jessica, my youngest sister?" Jesse pressed.

"At six years old? I'd rather not have a six year old rule the world, thank you very much." Willow returned with an amused yet ladylike smile.

"Agreed. On the other hand, I'm not too fond of staying 'almost fourteen' forever, either. I already passed up being a Catholic because I don't want to be celibate for life, and I'm aiming to pick up a priesthood somewhere. I fear that given a choice between being a datable sixteen, or a shaggable twenty, and living in a gingerbread house, my choice is already obvious." Jesse leaned back and began juggling apples.

"When you put it that way..." several heads mused, most of the girls staring sidelong at Xander.

"Still, we could always teach it to your other sisters. They could pick this up and then we'd make THEM rule the world!" Xander enthused.

"Granny didn't know any 'rule the world' recipes, unfortunately," Willow admitted with a sigh. "But, even worse, it'd take me twenty years to train them up to that skill level, even if I did!"

"And that... I see your point. That catch-22 again." The light dawned.

"Yes, anyone old enough to know anything useful in this style is too old to use it properly," the redhead once more stated. "It just takes too long to learn."

"Except, perhaps, for us?" Amy ventured meekly, looking hopefully at Willow.

The redhead nodded. "Yes. I can keep myself, and a few others, young enough so we can use this at our current efficiency our whole lives. Maybe I can do our whole group, but I'm not sure. But we can find out!"

"Uh, need I remind you of that be a candy wizard vs attract the opposite sex equation I pointed out earlier?" Jesse caught his apples to meet their eyes.

"Oh, that?" Willow actually looked startled, the first truly off-guard Willow moment since she'd returned from that whole ancestor spell thingy. "Sorry, I forgot to say, my great ancestress worked on that her whole life, and came up with something to partially fix the problem near the end. You still have to live in a 'lair' as they call it in this industry, but you can change the physical age of your body without aging your core. There's a limit, you can only stretch it so far, like half your real age. But at fourteen we could all reach twenty one physically!"

"Old enough to buy doughnuts without showing your license," Xander nodded sagely.

"Did she ever explain the cliche of it being an OLD witch who lived in the gingerbread house in the fairy tales?" Amy asked, lofting her eyebrows.

Willow nodded. "Yes. Indeed, that's where she got part of her 'work out how to be older without aging your core' thingy. There are actually several ways of freezing your age magically in this style. The main one of 'stop aging physically and magically' is a comparatively recent innovation, within the last few hundred years or so. That one came out too late for Granny, who never used it, even though she'd learned it by the end. Before that there were two competing styles: letting your body age twice as fast while letting your core stay young, or the other big thing just freezes the age of your native power core without touching the body at all. So either way you grow all fugly and old while still having powers."

"That second one seems an obvious choice," Amy observed.

Willow chose her next words delicately. "Granny never did that herself, even though she did use that form as a basis for her research. But it's unstable." Here she made a disgusted face. "So you have to eat young children regularly to keep your powers. I'm rather glad she'd worked out something different, to be honest."

There was dead silence for a stunned moment.

"Yeah," Xander agreed, scratching the back of his head thoughtfully. "I can't see myself learning a style of magic that made me do that, honestly."

"But we don't have to do that!" Willow hurried to reassure. "That's like, the Betamax version of staying young: obsolete and never really adopted all that much in the first place!"

"Yeah. But there's still that whole 'never leave your house' thing going on," Jesse leaned back and crossed his arms, closing his eyes.

"Lair," Willow corrected. "Never leave your lair."

"There's a difference?" Cathy caught the emphasis.

"A very important one," the redhaired witch reassured everyone. "You can only really have one home. But you can have all the lairs you want, and a lair can be something mobile, like a car. There were several gypsies that used this style and just never left their wagons."

"I can't really see us driving Xander's 57 Chevy into math class," Marcie put her own two cents in, probing delicately, sure there was something more.

"I dunno. The idea of Drive-Through School is kinda appealing," Xander mused. "Now all we'd need is a concession stand and popcorn deliveries to your window."

Willow giggled before schooling her face into something more appropriate. "As much fun as that sounds, Granny gave me an easier option. If you are very, Very skilled at candy magic, which thanks to her I am, you can make a very, very small lair - one small enough to carry around with you."

Here she adopted an impish smile, and indicated her sleeping gown. "This dress is actually a lair. I enchanted it the moment I woke up."

Eyes widened in dawning understanding all around the young girl.

"So..?"

"I can't make everything into lairs," the girl hastily informed them. "And they do require some upkeep. But if you all want to adopt signature jackets or something, that would be easy."

"School jerseys?" Xander asked the room at large, setting off much thought. "I can think of plenty of jocks who wear those everywhere, on and off campus. So we'd have that whole 'blending in' thing covered."

A massive storm of agreement failed to emerge. It wasn't disagreement either, they were just still thinking of options instead of leaping for the first available or easy answer.

"So... why gingerbread?" Amy asked at last. "There's got to be a reason."

Willow nodded politely, back to being very ladylike. "It's simple. Most witches and wizards are very poor, but this style lets you bake some pretty amazing things, like expanding gingerbread that grows to be harder than stone - and cheaper too. But there's that whole 'I don't have to leave my house to quarry this' aspect going on. Building a new house while staying in your kitchen is important in a style that doesn't normally let you go outdoors. And Granny was one of the very few who ever learned how to make a lair small enough to carry with you, so going outdoors is a problem for most. They could do it. Every minute you are outside you age at the normal rate. So it would be a minute, but they still begrudge every one of those lost. Even after you bake yourself a new house the standard method of moving was to get a servant to go place it somewhere, trigger the charms to expand it to full size at the new location, then carry you to the new place in a barrel, with the barrel enchanted to be a lair so you don't lose even one minute in the move. They got a trifle obsessive about the whole thing, to be honest."

"And the candy canes on the lawn?" Xander couldn't help but ask.

"Light poles, vampire repellent, that sort of thing," Willow answered. "Most of this style of magic is in things you bake. So, if you want something done, it will most likely be a candy doing it."

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Okay, Willow the Witch has been a mainstay of this genre since, like, forever. But, raise your hands, how many of you have seen her living in a Gingerbread House before?

Frankly, uber-super witch has been overdone and I wanted to try something new, take her in a new direction.

Also, in a world where myths are often real... where did those gingerbread house stories come from?


	19. Chapter 19

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Nineteen

by Lionheart

I O I O I

"Aw, man! I thought having a super cook around us guys would get to spend LESS time in the kitchen baking and preparing!" Jesse groaned.

SNAP! CRACK!

Xander stood by, smiling, having just used his whip to flip a 50 lb bag of flour off a top shelf, then slice open the top of it after it had landed next to the tub they were mixing in. Reaching in, he began to measure out cups into the automatic mixer.

"Oh, I wouldn't say anything bad about it."

"You wouldn't," his best male friend groused.

Xander laughed. "Well, at any rate, I'm glad to be learning how to make some dishes that aren't tacos!"

"Dude!" Jesse rounded on him. "Don't say that. You are, like, the Mexican food GOD!"

"And they spiced their food heavily to disguise the slightly rotten taste of the somewhat spoiled ingredients," Xander shot back good-naturedly. "They didn't have refrigeration back when they were developing their cooking style, and compensated as best they knew how - but every so often I'd like to eat something without setting a fire in my tummy."

"You just don't have any tolerance." Jesse formed a fist and posed. "Build it UP, man! Overcome that weak and flabby constitution of yours!"

By now the girls could not hold it in any longer and burst out laughing, filling the kitchen with the sound of female laughter.

"Now, my apprentice candy wizards," Willow played serious lady type while barely concealing her own amusement. "Don't forget what you are doing."

"Yes ma'am." Both returned to their labors.

Easily a dozen projects were going on in that kitchen at once. It turned out "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory" could almost be a documentary as far as Willow was concerned. In fact, Everlasting Gobstoppers, ice cream that didn't melt in the sun, outrageously delicious chocolates, and gum that was actually a five course meal, the signature wonders of the fictional Willy Wonka, were actually rather tame by the standards of her new style. She could not only do them, and do them well, but she could do so much more.

Actually, as they would later learn, some pretty amazing things lay within her bailiwick. Funky, but amazing.

Jesse was caramelizing some sugar, while Xander was pouring out a heavy tub of batter into cake pans, when Willow returned from the ovens holding a dish of something white in her hot pad covered hands.

It was her first creation since learning this style and enchanting the house, and they all stared at her curiously as she called a break and explained, tossing the oven mitts back onto the table.

"It's a bit of Greek Divinity candy, among the most powerful things my great ancestress taught me how to make. It's supposed to make you a perfect example of humanity."

"So we'll all want to go out and bugger goats?" Cathy lofted an eyebrow sarcastically. "I know things about the ancient Greeks that I don't like. 'A woman for duty, a boy for pleasure, and a goat for ecstasy' is one of the more disturbing quotes that come to mind."

"No! This, well I guess you could say it maximizes our potential as humans. It's to make us stronger, faster, smarter, and all that," the redhead burbled, blushing embarrassedly.

"So, it's a bit like the Captain America Super-Serum? Cool!" Jesse got excited, setting down his mixing spoon. "But will I have to wear tights?"

"Actually, no. You'd be surprised," Willow corrected, waving her own spoon as an instructor's baton, flour covered hands on her aproned hips. "It's not that way at all. Good health and genes only go so far, and that's all this offers. Remember, also, that we're past the age that all this works perfectly for us. We'll get good health and a basic increase in fitness and mental acuity, but training trumps natural talent. It always has, and always will. If you have a great brain and are lazy and do nothing with it you'll be surprised by how much farther a person with only adequate intelligence but strong drive can go. So, if you want to be a great athlete, you'll still have to work hard for it."

"So, like with D&D, you roll three six sided dice (aka 3D6) for strength, intelligence, wisdom and all that, and we all get straight 18s? That's still majorly sweet!" Jesse's joy could not be suppressed.

Willow had already signaled imperiously for the pans of gingerbread men to be slid into the ovens, before turning to continue to instruct her crew. "No, it's more like Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, where you roll 3D6 for your base stats, then add on 3D6 to one stat for training in this skill, 2D6 more for taking that one, 4D6 because you chose a rigorous martial art... like that, over dozens of skills with small bonuses. Yes, having very high base scores is helpful, but extensive training trumps it every time. You take your natural eighteen up against someone who's trained til he has a forty, and well... you understand. Also, vampires have something in the realm of forty strength to start with." Willow hated being a wet blanket.

Xander was nodding along agreeably. "You know, that could be a fair example. On 3D6 the average roll is ten and a half, call it ten. That's average human ability. But vampires are four times stronger and three times faster. So... calling it forty strength and thirty speed may be just about right."

"Still, I'll take eighteens up against forties and thirties sooner than I'd take tens any day!" Marcie blurted, no longer able to hold it in.

"Agreed," the group chorused.

"Amen, sister." Amy enthused.

"And don't forget," Willow comforted, "we ARE training! So at some point we can expect to get somewhere above basic human norms. Even exceptional human stats are still not on par with most vampires, and the masters and older vampires are more powerful still. But it's a start!"

She got murmurs of agreement all around.

"Good! Now whip up that frosting! It's got to be extra light!" Sheepishly, they all resumed taking instruction from the imperious gestures of her spoon.

In a kitchen, Willow was Queen. A nice queen, she might even be termed sweet, but a queen whose orders must be obeyed all the same.

I O I O I

A trio of heavily armored, fire-resistant demons had been hired by the local police to stand guard over a vampire nest to reassure the night spawn they were being protected.

They found themselves utterly useless as the lair was ripped to shreds.

They'd been expecting flame attacks and holy water. They'd even prepared for curtains being cut and sunlight attacks. What was NOT anywhere on the agenda was impossibly fast gingerbread men flinging about Explosive Fireball gumballs that actually exploded with a force greater than the US Army got out of their grenades.

Bits and pieces of vampire flung through the air turned to dust and ash in flight, before raining bits of the less heavily over-armored demons.

"Run, run, run, as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm a gingerbread man!" the little candy teased, before racing off at obscene velocities.

The hulking demons ground to an exhausted halt, armor vents flapping open to get more air past their gills after the futile chase. Speaking to each other in clicks and whistles, translated roughly, their conversation went something like, "Man! It's like trying to chase down the Roadrunner!"

This trio were old, older than most vampires, and had seen a great deal, probably because they were terrible addicts to gossip and daytime TV.

"The Roadrunner with a flamethrower," the second answered, chest plates open and billowing as it struggled to inhale more air. "Man! Maybe it wasn't such a nice idea to move here to the Hellmouth, after all. I had no idea there was this kind of serious opposition on the other side."

"I had no clue there was any hero operating here AT ALL!" the third wheezed. "Where did this one come from, and who IS she?"

"Gotta be a candy witch," the first replied, having eaten a few storytellers in his day. "No one else could send out animated candy treats as her goons."

"Man, do I gotta remind you those animated candy treats have been kicking our collective butts? What's this chick doing here? What does she want?"

"Dunno. Can't be the Hellmouth," the first continued. "The sort of energy that gives off is totally useless to a chick who bakes all of her spells and minions. Candy witches usually stay away from large bodies of water, too, as it melts too many of their toys and tricks."

The third barked bitterly. "Yeah, well, news flash: There's one here."

"I KNOW that!" The first spread mandibles wide, threatening the other before stopping and retracting with an insectile sigh. "C'mon, we gotta go see the mayor about this."

The trio of hulking demons trudged off despondently, unaware that between the first and third waves of gingerbread soldiers carrying explosive candy bombs had been a second wave bearing great big sacks - and that had looted the vampire lair quite as effectively as three dozen four inch high supersonic pickpockets could be expected to. They'd even robbed vampire bits of jewelry and wallets, taking rings off of fingers that were flying apart mid-explosions, all without being seen as anything more than blurs.

Behind the bodyguard demons, the heavily ruined tract house leaned crazily over to the side and then collapsed.

I O I O I

Mayor Wilkins stood overlooking the aftermath of the latest catastrophe, a warehouse that had been utterly gutted by a recent, unstoppable attack. The building had collapsed and was so much sheet metal and scattered girders.

In the distance fires loomed into the sky from no less than three vampire nests and one demon bar ablaze, burning brightly as the fire trucks tried to put out the flames.

An aid spoke at his elbow, "It used to be you could shut down a candy witch by cutting off her supply of sugar. Unfortunately, long ago they became adept at creating sugar out of thin air. So that method is closed to us now."

When the mayor didn't say anything to contradict the expert on esoteric styles of magic-use, other flunkies immediately jumped on the bandwagon.

"We should still put a watch on the bakery supply stores, and the warehouse stores, anyone buying flour and other baking ingredients in bulk." Flunky number one tried scoring some points as he made note on a clipboard.

Flunky number two tried to cut him off and steal some credit through the introduction of a credible objection, "If she's smart, she'll be doing her shopping in LA. There are too many restaurants there to try and catch everyone who wants a few bags of flour."

"I know, but it's something." Flunky number one grinned toothily, displaying a mouthful of fangs that had no place in a human face. "We might get lucky - she could be stupid."

The expert on esoteric styles cut him off before the flunky war could get more out of hand. "She might just be foolish or naive enough to purchase her ingredients locally. To be a powerful candy witch, which this most definitely is, a being must be very young." The aid directed his gaze to the mayor. "The young are often naive, and make foolish mistakes."

"Why do you suppose she is doing this now? Why here? There are easier towns to conquer. Heck, I'd be willing to give her a list of addresses." Flunky number two scratched the back of his head.

"Doesn't matter." Mayor Wilkins spoke at last, coming out of his thoughts. "Perhaps she lost someone dear to her, and this is her form of revenge. She certainly wouldn't be the first to try such."

The police chief at his elbow paused seriously. "I'm still have trouble believing that we, masters of demons and vampires by the swarm, are being given so much trouble by a girl baking sweets and treats."

"Don't be," the expert barked a short, good natured laugh. "Actually, one of the most infamous witches of all time, Baba Yaga, the dreaded child-eating terror of Russian fairy tales, who lived in a house that walked around on chicken legs and only came out to fly in a giant mortar and pestle, was a witch of this style... among others. Most of the truly powerful magic users have mastered more than one style, but she got her start as a candy witch; and that gave her a long enough lifespan to master others, until she became the bogeyman of Russian folklore. Baba Yaga, more than any other person, was responsible for the word 'witch' being hated and feared. You don't have to pretend not to fear a powerful mistress of that same style."

"Ah, but are we dealing with a Sweet Candy Witch, or a Sour one?" The Mayor asked softly, still gazing at the scene of ruination in deep thought.

"It doesn't matter." The expert laughed. "Given the right provocation, even a Sweet Witch can become a Sour one. All we have to do is introduce a little bitterness into her life."

"But," here the mayor scowled. "That does necessitate finding her."

He gave his police chief a sharp and meaningful glare. The creature shaped as a man nodded fearfully and went off, busying himself in a hurry.

"Well," Flunky two began making up for lost ground. "We know she is new to the area. So I guess we should start checking into new arrivals to see who the best possibilities are."

"Also keep an eye on the local magic shops, and mail order magic supplies," Flunky one grabbed some of the glory a successful search would bring by taking part in helping make it a success. "She'll need to resupply or search for new recipes sometime."

"She won't be able to make it to any shops herself," the knowledgeable aid supplied. "Candy witches are bound to their homes, or an occasional vehicle. They dare not leave without reducing their magic. But you will be able to trace her flunkies back to her."

"Right."

And the machinery of government went into motion to find this dangerous criminal - the person who dared to destroy demons in their protected zone.

The mayor stood stock still, thinking, before he turned a smiling face to his aid. "How rare are the recipes and formulas for this style?"

"Very," the being answered without hesitation. "Their recipes are everything to them, and they rarely share them willingly. You won't find more than a handful, even with all your contacts."

Mayor Wilkins smiled fondly. "Excellent. Gather together that handful. The more rare those recipes are, the more valuable to those who seek them. We can set a little trap to see if we can't catch this witch, with these as bait - and a Sour Candy Witch could be extremely useful on our side."

He paused, looking at the sky, then smiled brightly. "In the meantime, call for rain. I hear those treats of theirs don't survive getting soggy."

"You are correct, sir," the knowledgeable aid bowed obsequiously.

I O I O I

Among scholars of the supernatural the well-respected but distressingly thin and incomplete 'Hunter's Encyclopedia of The Night' had remained unchanged since its long ago authors had died horrible, horrible deaths performing the research. To most, it was unthinkable to change it, like trying to complete an unfinished Rembrandt. The almost unique combination of scholarly insight and demon hunting skill represented a rare literary treasure.

Xander's copy of the book had already grown to about four times its previous dimensions, due to the extra data they'd added.

As the world's strongest active Hellmouth, Sunnydale contained a fascinating spread of demons and the supernatural, and having been instructed by those ghosts as to what killed them, Xander had a great deal of information to add about a wide variety of creepy crawlies, in unusually complete detail.

From his and Willow's perspective, it was just easier to record that know-how in an already existing format than to come up with their own, and no need to duplicate effort by recording what had already been recorded. So it was better all around to add to the book rather than start their own.

Besides, they were already demon hunters. So they qualified as much as 'Hunters' as whoever wrote that thing down in the first place. Right? Quite by coincidence, they also had that almost unique blend of scholarly insight and demon hunting skill, although both were comparatively recent for them.

Anyway, it was now their encyclopedia, and they were determined to finish it, as much as possible, for the sake of easy transferal of that data to the rest of their group, if nothing else.

Things were blooming for them like that in many ways, so much so they'd begun finding limitations on otherwise dependable resources.

They were starting to learn that Throckmorton's Codex, for all of its value, was still in some areas incomplete or woefully inadequate. For example, while there was a reference to whole schools of magic employing music and song, and a cantrip that gave its caster perfect pitch (briefly) there was no other information on that subject.

It was like hearing that people had once hunted whales, but no idea what for, how, or why. A hint at an entire cultural mainstay that had once existed, but no real feel for anything other than it had once existed.

And the details are important. Try hunting whales with beartraps and you're going to get nowhere.

Not having touched on candy magic or more than mentioned musical spells was a limitation now they had an expert candy witch and were developing the rest as her apprentices - along with quite a few budding musical geniuses.

Xander sighed, rubbing his brows. "Okay, sooner or later we're all going to have to face that, excellent though it is, Throckmorton's 'Annotated Codex of Magical Thought' was only ever intended to be his introductory volume into magical theory. It's incomplete, and we're starting to suffer for that."

Cathy Madison nodded soberly, where she was sitting, in an indecently short skirt, on a stood with her legs crossed. "Throckmorton was one of the most brilliant mages of his era, if one of the stuffiest old men who ever lived. But his genius did not take the form of creating new magic, only in codifying that which was already around him. And, there were not a few entire schools of magic he'd never heard of in his little corner of Europe. And many more that he had no more than rumors of. Still, he did beautifully define the cores of the schools of magic he was aware of."

"You've heard of him? Before us, I mean?" Willow did not know why that idea surprised her so much.

"Oh, yes." Cathy nodded. "He's well respected - to a point. Throckmorton was a genius, but he wasn't all-knowing or infallible. He died attempting one of the spells from his very own 'Powers and Rituals' book - which does not inspire confidence in his abilities. Most people accept that his Annotated Codex of Magical Thought is a premier work on theory, but they have much less confidence in his other books."

"Other books?" The redhead perked up, interested. Nor was she alone.

"Yes, his masterpiece was a five book series on magical theory. Although his last in the series, 'Powers and Rituals' is infamous for causing trouble, and the first, his 'Annotated Codex', is well-regarded for a reference tome, the others have all been more or less forgotten. Good luck finding a copy." Cathy was bemused by their eagerness.

That statement had caused Xander to sit up. "Five books? I thought there was only one between the Codex and 'Powers and Rituals'."

Cathy gave him an amused stare. "You've read that man's Codex. What made you think he knew how to shut up?"

Xander tasted his lips. "Ah. Good point."

A smile quirked the mother's lips. "It's actually one of his trademarks never to use one word when he could use five. Even his titles. The first is a little pompous, but his last book, universally shortened to 'Powers and Rituals' is actually, 'Studies on the Function of Certain Powers and their Relationship to Ritual Magics of All Sorts'."

Willow blinked. "I'd thought from what Xander said before that 'Powers and Rituals' was his third book. But you just said he had five books and that was his last."

"What was his third?" Marcie asked, also interested.

Cathy stayed amused. "His third is entitled, 'Sublimated Oneiromancy and Subconscious Manifestations of the Will'."

There was much swirling of eyes as people wrestled with the title. Finally Jesse blurted out, "What's it about?"

The former cheerleader shrugged. "From the title, I'd guess it covers most of the same material as your 'Ars Memoriae' scroll, although I couldn't give you an actual summary. No one alive that I know of has ever read the book."

"What are the others?" her daughter asked, taking a bite out of an apple that was actually an apple, and not transformed into something else.

The former cheer queen recrossed her legs, answering. "Well, according to my knowledge: First came the Codex. Then a book on the natural flows of power through geography and architecture - a book that's proven to have some notable flaws, which is probably what led directly to his death, as the 'Powers and Rituals' book draws on that one's teachings rather heavily. Being smart doesn't mean you don't make mistakes."

"Then the third, on mind stuff," Willow supplied helpfully.

Cathy nodded the point. "Throckmorton's fourth volume is where he finally ventured into permanent magic, a work entitled, 'The Unabridged Treatise on Talismanic Lore'. It's the only one of the five I think I could get hold of a copy of, other than the two we already have available. Some of the more obscure enchanters of amulets and trinkets use it as a reference work, almost like the rest of us use the Annotated Codex for basic theory."

"I think I speak for the rest of us in saying: Drool worthy," Marcie quipped.

Xander snapped his fingers playfully. "Darn! She beat me to it!"

"I know what I want in my Christmas stocking!" Willow agreed, clapping her hands in joy over the thought of getting so interesting a book.

"I don't think Xander will fit," Cathy quipped, deliberately misinterpreting.

Blushes all around.

"So, that was it, then?" Jesse brought the subject back from the ongoing teen romance.

The cheer queen shrugged quickly, bouncing her hair with the motion. "No. He was writing to the day he died. Throckmorton has never been one of my favorite authors, you understand. But I do recall having heard something about books not part of his magical theory series. Then, of course, combat spells and demonology are both described in his unofficial sixth book, and it is incomplete, as he died during a ritual while writing it. The only thing I've heard is a hint of the title, the Arcanabula-something-or-other."

"Demonology is for the ick," Marcie scowled.

"Agreed," most of the others chipped in.

"Although I wouldn't mind knowing some combat magic, I'm going to have to go out on a limb here and say that studying demonology, even from good-ol-Throck-boy, isn't worth the cost." Xander observed dryly.

"Amen brother," Jesse breathed profoundly grateful they all agreed.

"That way lies the Dark Side," Amy acknowledged.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Don't know why, this one just flowed, leaping out of my pen no sooner than I'd finished the previous chapter.

Oh, well. Hope it doesn't bore you too terribly much.


	20. Chapter 20

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Twenty

by Lionheart

I O I O I

It was a dark and stormy night.

That didn't help her victims any.

The first thing the cops knew anything was wrong was when one of their own police cruisers rammed into the front of the building, taking care of the front desk and smashing through the partitions into the rear area.

It was like a scene out of Terminator.

Then, getting out of the driver's side door of the now-wrecked cruiser was a hulking mass with glowing eyes. What did NOT mesh with the film was the huge grin on the face of the candy bear who'd been driving, or the small horde of gingerbread men wearing chewing gum raincoats and galoshes racing past its ankles and into the station through the banged up doorway.

Of course, some things worked in the Sunnydale Police Dept that would have given the Terminator pause.

Two Polgara demons raced to attack the candy bear, sinking their claws deep into its soft body, grinning madly... until they found they could not withdraw them or their arm spines. It was like a tar baby. Things could go in, but they couldn't go out again.

The giant candy still had a teddy bear grin on as it then jumped straight up right through the ceiling, scattering bits of paste-board and shingles as it made some serious headway into the nighttime sky, dragging the two demons shrieking into the air with it.

They began to shriek even louder as the still-smiling candy bear made its descent. On impact, the gummy bear flexed, smashing the trapped arms like a vice cracking open a lobster.

Of course, the Polgara demons were unable to properly appreciate this, as the rest of their bodies had smashed apart rather badly on impact as well.

Expelling the impurities from his gelatinous body, the still smiling gummy bear began to stride confidently into the station, where officers, SOME of which had managed to keep their guns despite the ever-increasing horde of four inch supersonic pickpockets tearing all over the place, stealing everything that could be stolen (even out of the evidence lockers), shot the approaching monster repeatedly in the face and chest.

Of course, shooting bullets into a thousand pounds of gelatin was an exercise in frustration, particularly when the giant bear never stopped grinning as he expelled the depleted rounds, then stalked forward and broke some necks.

It was most unnerving, especially as it seemed so cheerful all the time.

While to the cops the whole scene was probably very dramatic (there was a great deal of yelling and firing going on. Demons came leaping out of closets, vampires revealed themselves as clerks and paper-pushers, the station's hidden guardians, and then the gingerbread army was done looting and began to fling Explosive Fireball Gumballs about the place) it was all over in a few seconds, and the gummy bear, along with the almost centipedal swarm of gingerbread soldiers, were stalking out moments later.

I O I O I

"There is just something so wrong about our whole 'Hidden Command Center' theme," Jesse remarked to the world at large, looking about their present brightly lit chamber. "It just doesn't help me feel I am striking terror in the hearts of evildoers everywhere."

"Yeah. It looks more like 'Candyland Meets the Smurfs'" Marcie had to agree.

"I like it!" Amy proclaimed.

"Batman would hate it," Xander mused, looking about himself smiling at all the bright and cheerful overtones. "This is a definite 'No Brooding' zone."

Amy glared at him.

Xander beamed right back. "But, that said, what good has ever come out of brooding? No, I think I like our new hideout, too."

Amy beamed joy at him.

"Curses, foiled again," Jesse snarked.

Marcie eyed Xander askance. "Aren't you the guy who got trained by Zorro? C'mon! Where's the black and serious hero striking by night, inspiration to superheroes everywhere?"

"It just so happens he was a snarky, wisecracking hero who had more in common, personality-wise, with Robin than Batman," the young man answered her back with a grin. "And the black was strictly practical. Believe me, if he could've gotten away with it, it would've been a Robin-esque costume for him for sure. Silly Spanish peacock," Xander finished with fondness.

"Don't look at me," Amy defended when she saw Marcie turn her way. "Snarky, wisecracking hero trained this girl, too."

Cathy joined them at the giant hard candy conference table, being the first to take one of the brightly colored sugar crystal seats with marshmallow puff cushions. "Well, I for one, am tremendously impressed. The only other hero I know of to build their own super-secret base like this overnight was Superman, and he had a super technological crystal to do it all for him."

"Super-secret base is cool. It's just..." Jesse looked up at the glowing gumdrop chandeliers, the polished marble floors and walls adorned with swirly, colorful candies, and the rock candy furniture with, he had to admit the comfort of, deep, soft and thick marshmallow cushions. "I feel like an extra in a remake of The Wizard of OZ."

"Hmm, 'Charlie and The Chocolate Factory' might be more appropriate," Cathy smirked. "How ever did she tunnel all this out?"

"Star Trek," Jesse answered simply, torn between acting impressed at her use of such a highly respected source or disgruntled by her methodology.

Cathy blinked.

"One of the episodes of the original series had a monster that could move through rock like people move through air," her daughter explained, joining her at the table on one of those comfy-soft chairs.

"The Horta, a silicon-based lifeform from the episode 'The Devil in the Dark'," Xander finished offering out the pertinent details reverently. "It can secrete a powerful corrosive which allows the instant fashioning of tunnels through the hardest rock."

"And... what does that have to do..." Cathy began asking.

"Willow made some out of licorice drops!" Amy exulted.

Her mother blinked at the news.

"Proving that popular culture and magical powers are truly the most deadly dangerous combination of all," Jesse decided he was in favor of this after all. It was just too cool not to be impressed by.

"They also make excellent lair guardians!" Amy enthused. "Why, in the series when the Horta attacked someone it left them nothing more than a stain on the floor!"

"Okay, now I'm getting scared," Jesse admitted, suddenly looking around and wondering how far those creatures were away. He also found himself very interested in how fast they could run... glide, whatever. What did a mobile blob of glop do, slither?

Seeing him looking around many of them began to consider the size and scope of the base they were in for the first time, and how swiftly it had appeared.

More importantly, the power behind all that happening so quickly.

Sections of the California coastline had mountains practically within spitting distance of the shore, and Sunnydale was located in one of those spots. So it was easy for Willow to grab a mountain nobody else wanted and tunnel it out with a few dozen Licorice Hortas, giving them plenty of space for a secret base (and better still, Willow's Hortas were designed to metabolize certain kinds of rock, leaving only metal and gems behind, so they had a tidy stash of precious metals and uncut jewels a dragon might envy).

Frankly, it was a place Norad could be proud of, and just outside the city limits, too. So they didn't have much of a commute.

"Hmm," Xander perked up. "Don't look now, but I hear Willow Wonka coming back from terrorizing Sunnydale's corrupt finest with her Gumminator and gingerbread minions of doom."

"Hmm, nummy little minions," Amy leaned back, hiding her drool. Then she broke out into giggles. "I'm sorry, the whole 'Willow the Candy Witch' thing is cracking me up since she was the one to start the health food craze among us in the first place!"

There came much resultant laughter.

It was greatly needed.

According to a recent decision among the Scoobies, the Sunnydale police were at least complicit in the demon deaths in town for having shushed it all up so long, if not actively conspiring to murder innocents. Those crimes were worthy of death by any set of lawbooks not written by the criminals themselves. But it didn't make it any easier to order it done.

"How can you tell?" Marcie leaned forward to ask.

"We're underground. Sound travels well," Amy answered for him, also having heard the sounds of an approaching Willow.

Soon the topic of conversation had entered the room and sped straight to Xander, engulfing him in a joyous hug. He noticed she was in full sundress mode, and smiled that he had an effect upon anyone. "Nice dress."

She beamed up at him.

A bit uncomfortable with this, Jesse leaned against the table and asked, "So, how did the new honey glaze work?"

"Butter coating, not honey glaze." The candy witch answered. "It's a very important difference. Honey is water-soluble, while fats and oils repel water fairly well. So a butter-based frosting under their raincoats to catch any leaks was a sound strategy - and it worked out fairly well, although we did lose a few. The protection isn't perfect."

Willow's face then adopted a wicked gleam. "But the Gummy Bear golem worked beyond all expectations!"

"So what happens now?" Cathy inquired of the candy witch.

"Phase Two," Xander answered for her, still holding Willow in his arms.

"Oh?" Jesse asked.

"Mm Hmm," Willow nodded brightly, still clinging to Xander. "But it will have to wait a night. I'll need to whip up whole new batches of candy for it to work."

"So, what exactly is phase two?" Cathy inquired pleasantly.

Willow licked her lips before responding (still hugging Xander), "Well, Oakdale California is the home to a satellite plant of The Hershey Chocolate Company. And..."

Amy gulped, then joined the rest of the group in looking back in the direction of the great cavernous workrooms where facilities waited for giant pots and ovens to begin working. They just needed the giant pots and ovens to install.

"I hope they have good insurance," Cathy breathed in awe.

"They do. I checked," Willow confirmed with a wicked grin. "Even an especially good clause against burglary, vandalism and the loss of stock. And the holder of that insurance contract who'll be paying the bills is a demon-owned firm."

I O I O I

Mayor Wilkins lay down a newspaper, feeling very pale, as the headline proclaimed the Hershey plant in Oakdale had been stripped down to the last bolt and cacao bean.

Tons of chocolate, literal tons of candy ingredients of every kind, and top quality mass manufacturing machinery to process that into edible form. The implications of that were downright frightening, even to a mage such as he.

"How can we fight that?" the police chief breathed in horrified awe. "We're on the ropes as it is."

Indeed, the man had been lucky to have survived the loss of his department, having been among those officers who were off-duty and asleep when the station got destroyed.

There had been no survivors, but the security footage was chilling. Frankly it was striking terror into the hearts of those who were left on the force.

"The primary method of destroying a candy witch has always been to assault her lair," the knowledgeable aid said. "Kings who learned one was in his area would seek them out to pound their houses to rubble with catapults. Other magicians would summon demons to tear their lairs to shreds - all hoping to destroy the candy witch with them. The witches were so obsessive about not leaving those lairs they stayed in them even when they were under direct assault, and often perished when the walls fell in on them. But even should a witch survive, the loss of her lair would age her, diminishing her powers.

"One of the reasons Baba Yaga was so feared was that her lair moved, so could not be targeted effectively by siege engines. And she was also a better demonologist than those who opposed her."

"Demons?" The chief of police's head snapped up from where he'd been groaning into his hands. Reaching for a phone, he asked, "What sort of demons do you recommend?"

"Unfortunately, this candy witch appears to be more skilled than most," the aid admitted sheepishly. "She has already destroyed several types of demons that were perfectly sufficient against others of her ilk."

A flunky got off the phone, looking, if anything, paler than the mayor. "That was one of our contacts in LA. They want to know if there is any reason why two of Interstate Bakeries Corporation's largest plants there were attacked and stripped down to the bare floor and walls by a horde of gingerbread men. Entire factories full of machinery and warehouses full of flour and other ingredients are missing."

All present paled yet further.

Interstate Bakeries was the largest wholesale baker of fresh delivered bread and cakes in the United States, owner of such brands as Wonder Bread, Dolly Madison snack cakes, and Hostess.

Another aid's knees buckled as he got off the phone. Placing the handset on its receiver, he groaned, "She also hit," the man gulped, "A mega distribution center. Hundreds of truckloads of candy making supplies have vanished."

Mayor Wilkins gave a bemused check of his watch, then spoke dryly as he was putting it away, "I note apocalypse season is late this year. It's supposed to be in June, not mid-August."

"We must find her!" the police chief insisted, fear tinging his voice.

I O I O I

"This is actually less helpful than you might think," Willow declared, hands on hips as she gestured directions for her horde of gingerbread workmen with her spoon as they positioned giant ovens and reassembled the disassembled guts of several factories. Giant candy frogs were disgorging giant machines they'd swallowed for transport. The ingredients were already being stored in their own climate controlled caves. "Magic cannot be automated, that's part of what makes it magic."

"So, why steal all of this automated machinery?" Jesse was chewing on an apple that was actually a grape tart - a reversal of their usual 'healthy food into snacks' kick, just to be perverse.

"Yeah? Couldn't we have just snagged the ingredients?" Marcie supported.

Willow gave a giggle. "Oh, the ingredients are helpful, to be sure, but a giant oven can be enormously useful to bake giant things! Besides, these are fully automated factories, pour ingredients in one end, boxed snack cakes come out the other ready for shipment to stores. Full automation is no use to us. But partial?" She gave off a delicious shrug of her shoulders, bouncing hair as she did so. "Some recipes are more forgiving than others and don't have to be monitored over EVERY step by a functioning mage. We can get some use out of partial automation. Besides, your normal bakery doesn't stock ovens or pots this big, and we have some truly colossal recipes to be working on. Besides, I can tear some of these apart to remake 'em as magic ovens."

Eyes began searching for their resident handyman. Xander, however, was staring in awe at some of the newly arrived machines.

"Xander, what's wrong?" Cathy asked in concern.

Amy giggled. "Oh, nothing. Just a bit of specialized mass production machinery built for producing thousands of Twinkies every hour."

"I'm in Heaven," Xander breathed, trying not to fondle the machine. "This is bliss."

"Oh, get over it Xander," Amy teased, poking him in the ribs. "You get all the Twinkies you want already, and better nutrition, by transforming fruits and vegetables - not to mention practicing your magic while you do it."

"But..." the young man turned on a her a teary eyed gaze. "Twinkies, Amy, Twinkies!"

"If you want, I can make you a bed out of them," Willow offered.

I O I O I

It was interesting to note that, while her delicious freshly baked minions were out performing those raids, it was actually safer for the Scoobs themselves to be out and about, seen elsewhere. It was called having an alibi.

So they continued on their normal daily routines.

The hundreds of grape seeds, apricot pits, apples, limes, cherries, and melon seeds they had sprouted and planted all over town on their bike rides were now getting far more mature. This time, as always, as they went round those paths again visiting the now-month-old plants, they tried out their improved versions of the plant growth spells that had arisen from that sprout cantrip, giving them extra growth spurts with more magic.

In fact, shortly they'd be able to supply fruits. Well, the vines anyways, that was still too early for the young trees. But the trees did have what looked like several years of growth on them.

Once it had been Xander's ambition to grow trees that big and sell them, and he could easily do so save for the fact that now he knew how dangerous and magic-aware the local authorities were, he didn't dare for fear of drawing their attention. Which was a pity, 'cause he'd like to be able score a couple hundred bucks for a tree it took him only a few spells to grow.

A good, honest way to make a living that was sadly impossible due to facts beyond his control.

However, the vines were close enough to full size now they'd probably be able to bring in a harvest right bang on time, providing Willow with fresh fruits to use in her sweets, treats and candies.

The best of her ingredients could not be found in any factory or store.

This time as they rode their bikes around, continuing in their physical training regime, they also planted things specifically for Willow's use, like licorice and mint plants, stevia bushes, as well as sarsaparilla vines and sassafras trees - All of them extremely useful in the flavoring of candies and other treats.

In fact, the famous root that gave root beer its name came from the sassafras tree. Of course, until Willow told them that they never knew. Nor was that the only thing where the original plant source had been all but forgotten. The marshmallow plant was once widely used as a medicine, but convincing children to eat its roots was difficult. So early pioneer mothers took them and mashed them, in laborious amounts of work, until the roots took on a fluffy, light consistency they used in hand-made candies.

Then the confectionery companies got hold of the idea and simple gelatin was cheaper than marshmallow root and fluffed up just the same, so the actual root of the plant never got made into the mass marketed treats to bear the plant's name.

Candy companies were always making 'how do we make it cheaper' cost vs flavor decisions like that, and sadly saving a few pennies almost always won. In their raids the Scoobies had hauled in tons of paraffin wax, a petroleum product used by the companies as a filler ingredient because it was cheaper than chocolate and had almost the same texture without a competing taste.

Candy companies were businesses, and ultimately businesses are concerned with profits. Cutting corners, sacrificing quality a bit a time (just so long as they didn't lose TOO many customers) was not only acceptable practice among them, it was standard procedure.

The vast majority of licorice candies (red licorice) contained no licorice, and the few that did (black licorice) were mostly flavored with aniseed oil and ammonium chloride. You thought you didn't like licorice? You'd never TASTED it! The tiny amount begrudged in those black licorice candies was too small to detect. Actual licorice was fifty times sweeter than refined sugar. But the stuff they sold as black licorice was so bitter and astringent as to beggar belief that anyone could have the nerve to call them candies!

Toffees sold in America (even those labeled English Toffees) had been so adulterated with substitute ingredients they were basically inedible; and the major food companies had all gotten together to petition the government to change the legal definition of chocolate so they could eliminate all traces of chocolate from their products and still sell them as chocolate.

The original Twinkies were a baked shortbread cake with a banana filling. But for the past several decades they were a solely chemical product, a creation out of test tubes that foamed up without any recognizable baking ingredients at all, and that lovely brown layer on the bottom was a spray-on polymer made to let those 'cakes' look like it had been cooked instead of extruded. You could put one on an ant's nest and they'd ignore it like it was a rock.

It was standard procedure. And then certain candies stopped selling and the major food companies wondered why, blaming it on 'regional differences' - when the only difference in region was that some countries didn't let them get away with as much.

Swiss chocolate was famous mostly because that produced and sold in Switzerland wasn't allowed to be so degraded with cheap ingredients and filler. Although that sold in other countries under the label 'Swiss Chocolate' was no more Swiss than English muffins were English, and had just as much wax introduced to the process as the other adulterated stuff. Even the stuff produced in Switzerland for export was the same waxy garbage.

But Willow was an artist. The quality of her work came before all, and as far as she was concerned, the only use for paraffin wax in a kitchen was to polish the floors. She wouldn't even use it on waxed paper.

Due to her knowledge the Scoobies began to industriously plant more of different types of plants than they'd ever heard of before, and a big portion of those were wildflowers of every sort, as she desired various flavors of honey with which to make her confections.

It was good to have some things growing wild. However, it was better to have a steady supply. So, with some of the money pouring in from recent raids, they purchased a few large abandoned farms around the outskirts of town and began to plant earnestly all over again, planning for production to match the candy witch's needs - and a big part of that would be raising bees.

That wouldn't mean they'd neglect orchards, vineyards or fields of grain, but they did show a marked tendency toward flowing plants that could feed the bees so they'd give superior honey, as there always remained a tinge of the original pollen's flavor in the honey they produced from it. Orange blossom honey was one of the clearly superior forms, while the stuff extracted from almond trees in bloom was too bitter to be used as a sweetener.

Clover gave another of the superior forms of honey. So when they planted lawns or fields to play or practice on, clover was what they used.

They even got a fair amount of practice in building greenhouses, so they could grow their own cacao trees, vanilla beans and other tropical treats.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

I have had toffees from England and chocolate from Switzerland, the stuff produced for domestic consumption and NOT the export garbage, so I know of what I speak.

Sadly, it's ruined me for American chocolates, as it's like a pale waxy shadow of the real stuff. Even the supposedly high end treats are insignificant next to the stuff I'd had from abroad.

A place selling the real stuff would put all other companies out of business inside of a year. The difference is THAT extreme! Unfortunately, the food lobby in Washington is owned by those companies that would be put out of business, and they like things the way they are, so it is actually illegal to sell food of a higher grade than they do.

Your tax dollars at work.

Of course this also means that Willow will have to do a significant amount of retooling and restocking before she can get as much use out of those recent hauls as she'll ultimately be able to.


	21. Chapter 21

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Twenty-One

by Lionheart

I O I O I

The Sunnydale Police Force had been annihilated. What few had not been present for the destruction of the station had been hunted down in their homes when Willow and her hacker-apprentice Xander had gotten hold of the station's records out of the stolen computers.

Few indeed were the cops that had escaped that purge.

Their reason for doing this was very simple. The cops there were maximally corrupt, concerned with helping demons instead of humans. Indeed, they had a role almost like ranchers keeping human cattle for the demons to consume. And corruption was contagious, so long as they had a core of demon serving cops to train the new recruits in what they were really doing it would have been much less effort to rebuild that department into exactly what it was.

The best way to train an elephant has ALWAYS been to stick it in a yard with an already trained elephant, then punish it when it doesn't go along with the example set by the trained one. The same applies to humans.

Lacking that core of maximally corrupt cops, however, it became a great deal more difficult to recreate the corrupt department. It is a massive step to go from 'idealistic recruit' to 'selling out the human race to monsters' and it just doesn't come easily to most people. Lots of peer pressure and the occasional body bag full of those who won't corrupt are required, and both of those require a bunch of people already going along with the system.

Having to restart that department from the ground up would be the most damaging thing ever done to the mayor's plans, as so much else that went on wasn't possible without the police smoothing things along and covering up.

Of course, computers hadn't been the only thing Willow's gingerbread thieves had stolen from that station. There actually hadn't been many drugs (the cops had been using them - they'd viewed it as necessary stress relief, and a fringe benefit of membership on the force. Selling out your race to monsters does not sit easily on the soul) but weapons had been found in all varieties. Guns had been there, of course, but few of those cops hadn't possessed a backup demon hunting weapon just to be safe.

The evil side doesn't, CAN'T trust each other, and it's best to be prepared.

Unfortunately, there were also a number of cursed objects as it was one of the mayor's favorite sports to release those through the magic shops to people who'd only just become aware of the threats. So the Scoobies didn't dare use any of discovered weapons until they could perform a thorough investigation to determine which were ok, and what were the clever traps.

However, it had been the ordinary finds of wallets and credit cards that were doing them the most good. With the kind of data they'd found, it was easy to perform identity theft on those so-recently-dead-it-wasn't-reported cops and drive up thousands of dollars of bills on their names.

It was called: Total War. Every resource for hurting the enemy could be used. There was no Geneva Convention, and no treaties. In a war for racial survival you do not pull your punches or go easy on traitors. So anything goes, and pulling resources out of enemy hands to fuel your own forces was a tactic as old as war itself.

So Willow was running a money-laundering scheme using the credit cards and bank account information of those cops and other evil people they'd slain. A handful had even been pre-approved for home loans, and by selling properties that did not exist to them she could net significant fractions of a million at a pop, and cover the whole thing by setting up a bogus escrow company.

The cash was literally flowing in, although it got filtered first through a series of companies, countries, banks and withdrawals in other states - and that was just the stuff comprehensible to an ordinary Joe. Willow was in hacker heaven getting really esoteric and funky hiding her money laundering.

Already the witch was richer than Xander. There had been a lot of dead cops that needed to apply for new credit cards. Xander was helping her full-time, doing what she'd termed 'the easy stuff', while she took care of the special or complicated things, like protecting their hides from discovery.

Amy was already picking out programming books and hacker tutorials for her next hypnotism session.

Frankly, Jesse, Marcie and Cathy were all drooling over those possibilities themselves. The vampires in town more often than not had legal identities provided by the mayor's subordinates, and with their driver's licenses and other ID cards they'd been carrying, it was easy to make the creatures apply postmortem for credit cards, car loans and home purchases as well - all through demon owned credit companies, of course.

Those were what those vampires would have been using anyway, they even got preferential treatment.

Of course, her candy minions were hardly idle while the teens did this. After a whirlwind of greenhouse construction, they'd been robbing select parts of the town down to the bare walls.

The Sunnydale Public Library had lost everything, especially of all their books. The Sunnydale Mall (owned by the mayor, naturally), had also been stripped most effectively, as had the homes of dead cops. All of the banks in town (also owned by the mayor - he was a far-sighted man who'd been around a long time and knew to get in on the ground floor of valuable things like banks) found themselves victims to literal runs, as tiny thieves blew open vaults, drawers and ATMs to make forcible withdrawals: All FDIC insured, of course.

Federal Demon Insurance Corporation. In some places the rot went all the way to the top.

Gingerbread minions had stripped all of the junkyards in town for metal plus junked cars. A couple of restaurants, plus a restaurant supply store, had gotten raided (although she'd skipped the warehouse store). Calax Research and Development building had also gotten hit. The full computer and robotics setup inside was an incredibly lucky find for the demon hunting gang.

To the mayor's dismay and surprise, the lumber yard and some industrial buildings, welding and machine shops had gotten burglarized. They'd even gone so far as to dismantle some empty warehouses for the sheet metal.

All of this was spelling a candy witch who not only had imperial ambitions, but was willing to think outside the box, as there was no point to most of them in acquiring wood when they could instead use gingerbread.

Fortunately for the mayor, he had found a solution.

I O I O I

Mayor Wilkins was not a powerful man because he, of himself, was anything all that special. There were better schemers than he, and more powerful men both in magic and in politics.

No, the man was dangerous because he was connected. Due to his position as a supplier of what they truly wanted, human victims, and because he'd been doing it so long, he knew everyone worth knowing in the demonic underworld.

So when he sent out a call for help, it got answered.

Candy witches were all but extinct for a reason, and it wasn't because there hadn't been powerful ones before Willow. And it wasn't because they got too old and died - they were good at preventing that.

No, it was because the prominent ones had all gotten destroyed.

The three fire resistant, heavily over-armored demons who'd been so helpless against the candy menace guarding a vampire nest had been relocated to keeping guard over the mayoral mansion, holding the very thick doors shut. And since their own names were unpronounceable by any tongues but those of their own race, they'd taken names from human heroes for convenience, picked up from their addiction to daytime TV.

So all their associates called them: Larry, Moe and Curly.

Hey, they'd picked up those names a long time ago, back when television was a new thing. Still, having survived when so many others became casualties, those were the three on guard when the new reinforcements arrived.

The three pulled themselves to attention when the limo the mayor had sent to pick up his team of guest witch hunters at the airport pulled up. Three solemn figures getting out of the vehicle were not unexpected. That all three were wearing black from head to toe was somewhat typical in this business.

But as the demons watched the three little men, each one dressed in a long, black coat, with homburg hats crushed down on their heads, with the beards and earlocks of ultra-orthodox Jews scrambling comically out of the vehicle, they couldn't fight a sensation that something was most desperately wrong.

It wasnt actually an uncommon strategy. There were bad Jews just as there were bad Christians, people who followed the outward forms without actually adhering to the true message of the faith. But one of the more perverse approaches to demonology was to cling ever more tightly to the outward forms of one's faith, in the hopes that would be worth some kind of heavenly credit that could protect you against any errors in summoning or binding.

These people apparently never saw the inherent contradiction of asking a good God to protect you while you go out and use that protection to commit evil deeds furthering the destruction of his children. But people are infinite in their capacity for self-deceit.

Strange thing was, God is such a merciful being that as far as precautions against a major screw-up in demonology were concerned, it was among the most reliable - to a point. Actual religious conviction and devotion to evil were two opposite influences, and, in the words of Christ, "No man can serve two masters." So eventually, as with all precautions in demonology, it was doomed to fail.

But that didn't stop people from trying. Their capacity for self-deceit is, as has been pointed out previously, apparently infinite.

Larry, Moe and Curly watched, sweatdropping, as the trio of ultra-orthodox Jews muttered their way up the steps and into the building to see the mayor.

Mayor Wilkins and his much-reduced cabinet were tremendously glad to see them.

The trio of witch hunters wasted no time in getting down to business. In strong Yiddish accents they stated, "Vur el der..." mumble, mumble...

The politician's eyes crossed and he turned to one of his flunkies who knew Yiddish. The man coughed into his fist and translated, "They say: For all their potential, candy users are not the most powerful mages out there. The style has some notable flaws, not the least of these is their reliance on lairs."

The knowledgeable aid nodded knowingly. "The central weakness of all candy witches has always been their reliance on lairs. However, there are others - the lack of any kind of focus on transportation magic being among them."

The trio of witch hunters began waving their hands and the government types quieted down to listen to their briefing.

"Dert bi de..." mumble mumble...

Everyone turned to the flunky who spoke Yiddish, who coughed into his hand and translated, "That is the first great disadvantage. The second is water, but the third is fire. The greatest of all candy witches have overcome one, rarely even two of these problems, but never all three."

I O I O I

"So, what does 'Arcanabula' mean, anyway?" Jesse asked.

"Oh?" Xander wasn't hardly paying attention. "It just means 'spell workbook'. You'd think he'd come up with something loftier sounding or obscure."

"Actually, Xander, that is pretty lofty sounding and obscure for us normal mortals who don't have twenty years of Latin study under our belts." Marcie set a bow to her fiddle with the rest of them, under Amy's example.

The Scoobies were presently using their ape charms to study music from Amy, who was an expert, her wearing the master while the others copied her actions, learning how to play her instruments professionally.

Shortly, they'd be studying archery the same way.

It was ironic, really, that the girl who'd demanded the boys take care of half the overall share of cooking because she'd thwacked herself in the boob with a bowstring and needed the extra archery practice, was now their resident archery genius, having been an actual Merry Maid in Robin's band.

They had gone to school that day, done some testing, and now everyone was signed up for AP and honor courses. They'd tested out of language course requirements, which got them an extra elective slot apiece, and gotten a sort-of waiver for the Phys Ed requirement by getting course credit for the martial arts they were taking, so long as they continued taking them through the year and their instructors agreed to certify their progress with grades suitable for calculating into their GPAs.

When they'd set their bows down again, Marcie spoke carefully. "I do rather hope that Jesse's little sisters are getting that Greek Divinity candy, since it'll help them out the most; and the smarter, faster, stronger whatever else they are the better chance they don't become junior happy meals. There aren't foul enough words for how I feel about people who hurt children."

"Well, yes," Willow answered. "But I don't intend to do that for every kid in town. Granny was most firm about that - you save your powerups for those who are actually on your side. Anyone else could become an enemy, and you don't want them to use your own boosts against you. I mean, just think about it, those candies grant a form of perfection to the physical body. So what happens when someone who's had one gets turned into a vampire, and that physical body becomes the vessel for a demon already capable of enhancing it to superhuman levels?"

Jesse whistled low in respect. "Nasty."

"Four times eighteen is a great deal more scary than four times ten," Amy gave her own gulp of apprehension.

"Almost twice as bad," her mother supported. "And while there are a handful of vampires out there who took over exceptional individuals, we don't want to add to those numbers by casually supplying superior bodies for them. And the real trick is most people never know they are in danger before they're dead. So extra speed or endurance doesn't stop them from being turned."

"Couldn't we just tell them all?" Marcie asked.

Xander shook his head. "We can't afford to make everyone a full Scooby because there are selfish or untrustworthy people out there who'd sell us out to the mayor - quite a lot of them, actually. We are already a very large group for keeping secrets effectively, and according to Van Hellsing and my great ancestor, most heroes get betrayed by the people closest to them."

"Robin managed it," Amy corrected, before her shoulders sagged, "Still, in the end, it was a betrayal that got him."

"William Wallace in Braveheart too," Jesse gulped.

"Well, then what about partial-Scoobs?" Marcie insisted. "Don't let them in on any of the big secrets, just tell them how to defend themselves?"

"A good idea," Xander clapped a hand on her shoulder. "And since it was yours, you're in charge of it. Come up with a plan for review by the rest of us for how we can go about warning the citizens of this fine town about the threats here without revealing who we are - which is one of many big secrets we don't dare let out. Alright?"

Marcie paled as the weight of responsibility fell on her shoulders, and she was tasked with thinking through a solution rather than simply complaining about the problem.

Cathy couldn't help laughing at the look on the girl's face. Complaining was easy. Any moron could do it, and most morons did, whether it was a valid complaint or not. Thinking up a solution was something far different, and the girl looked shocked.

Her laughter drew attention and people began to consider Catherine Madison more carefully. The woman had joined them for all of their classes and sessions after their family vacation, substituting herself with a disguised zombie at her job at the library (no one noticed, it was THAT dull of a job!). But now Catherine Madison looked good, in fact too good. They were all looking great between all of the exercise, the new metabolism enhancement spell, training, transforming food, and the Divinity candy. But Cathy...

Willow sucked in a shocked gasp. "Cathy! When did you..?"

"Grow young?" the woman answered, finishing her question for her. Rising from her seat, she went to stand beside her daughter, putting an arm around the girl's shoulders, making the resemblance clear.

Cathy and her daughter were now of identical age.

Amy shrugged. "Mom felt I needed a bodyguard at school, someone able to use subtle combat spells where I couldn't really use archery or my sword."

Cathy nodded. "At first I was going to use a zombie for that super strong deal, after all there are plenty of unused bodies around. But there was the whole 'unable to learn and too stupid to pass classes' issue... so, this."

"Yeah," Amy nodded brightly. "She sucked a couple of dozen years out of vice-principal Snyder to get her youth again. I mean, after our first meeting with him it was clear this was an example of humanity that no one could possibly miss, so... Now mom's a teenager like the rest of us. Chill, right?"

"So... he's older?" Willow chewed her thumb.

"Yes," Cathy fluffed out her hair. "By about two dozen years. Normally this kind of youth magic is very temporary, and comes back on you with interest, which is why most witches don't use it. It's a tricky and costly bit of magic, but so long as I stay in your style of magic lair it should work out just fine. He'll 'bleed out' the extra years over the next couple of weeks, and normally they'd return double to me. But they can't get me while I'm in your lair. So... no harm, no foul, right?" she finished off with a cheer.

There was much confused staring.

"How'd you get the records?" Marcie asked in a daze.

Cathy shrugged. "You'd be surprised how easy it is to create false IDs in this town. You approach a certain bar, step up drooling acidic slime or whatever, rasp out in your too deep voice that your breeding cycle has arrived and that you need young men to devour, pay a fee and receive an identity with the full backing of the local civic government as the new biology teacher."

"That happened to you?" Jesse's eyes bulged.

"No, it was the giant preying mantis ahead of me in line." Cathy brushed his fear aside before bouncing into a smirk. "They gave her a year to learn how to disguise herself as something human. But she can already legally drive."

"What about you?" Xander inquired.

"Me? I just told them I was a new vampire coming to town and they printed out the whole set for me right there, no questions asked."

"And they believed you?" Amy asked of her mother.

"Why shouldn't they?" Cathy shrugged. "I mean, I'd cloaked my aura to hide the human parts, and cast another spell to fake a demonic one. They don't have all that accurate aura sight, so they believed what they saw. Besides, what point is there in a human faking being a vampire to get human ID?"

"Not much, I'd guess." Willow conceded.

"Well, not outside this town, at any rate." Jesse rolled his eyes and folded his arms, disgust at their local government rolling off him.

"So, chill. Now I'm legally registered as Amy's fraternal twin sister," Cathy told them all. "The house and all of the important stuff I put into a trust so I can still manage them, and the disguised zombie can still hold down my old job so we've got my old income. Everything looks rosy for us at this point. I may even make a new zombie to pose as our dad to get a job driving a garbage truck or something. They can never get a reliable work force to handle that or the post around this town; and double the income, double the fun, right?"

Cathy brushed her hands lovingly down her smooth sides, before scowling. "Unfortunately, while this spell works to get the body young, it still doesn't do anything for that part of my magic core that could make me into a good candy witch. So I'm still stuck doing spells the old way for now, if I want anything I do to be effective. Still, I can practice just to become a good cook, can't I?" the now young woman bounced into another cheering pose.

If it were anyone else, they'd be afraid for their sanity. Someone actually CHEERFUL about facing High School AGAIN?!?

But they all knew Cathy by now, and it was clear to everyone that her life had basically stopped once she'd graduated. They all thought it a bit pathetic, but they could see her wanting to relive her 'glory years' like that, and perhaps launch into a more successful life after graduation this time.

So, in the perverse way of things, it was actually sensible... well, for her.

Besides, they hadn't come this far as a group without becoming tolerant of each other's faults. And Amy was already breathing sighs of relief, as with her mom able to relive her OWN past glories, she wasn't pushing AMY to do it as much, and that reduced the pressure she put on to a considerable degree.

"Oh, and Amy?" her now VERY young mother spoke cheerfully, "We're going down to the DMV to get you to a driver's test tomorrow. Our 'zombie mom' will sign you up for that state exemption, so you can get your license early - Willow and Marcie too, if they're ok with a few disguise spells on the zombie to impersonate their moms. From what I know of those women they won't care, that is if they even notice."

While not exactly intended as a bribe, that's the way it worked, as suddenly Amy's mom had sweetened the pot to a VERY great degree for two of those girls, and those votes would sway the boys.

So, given that they'd already taken to accepting some pretty odd things as normal, they just brushed it off and accepted it along with the rest of the weirdness now populating their lives.

Suddenly the lair lights turned red in Star Trek 'Red Alert' style, along with the colorful motion graphics the camera likes to focus in on.

Without anyone asking it to, the table they were all seated around became a full color projection map covering the surrounding area, and flashing red symbols showed that not only had opposing forces engaged Willow's guardians, it was the guardians who were getting torn into pieces, slaughtered wholesale by whatever those invaders were.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Next chapter: Proof why candy witches don't rule the world, as Willow gets her bottom spanked (and not by Xander, so she disapproves)!

On another note, I don't actually speak Yiddish, so rather than try to write a strong accent I'm not too familiar with, I had the trio of men descend down into mumbles. So sue me, it was a needed bit of literary license to pull off a joke I couldn't otherwise manage, and I'm sure it doesn't concern 90 percent of my audience, not knowing Yiddish any more than I do. 


	22. Chapter 22

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Twenty-Two

by Lionheart

I O I O I

For only having been a candy witch a couple of days, Willow had an impressive ring of guardians. There were giant rock candy porcupines shooting quills like delicious candy darts. She had another Gummi Golem on defense and squads of gingerbread men throwing explosive fireball gumballs.

All of which were getting destroyed wholesale.

Willow was still new at this, and didn't have many of her creations to lose. Even though she'd been cooking at a whirlwind pace and employing all of her friends as apprentices to help it was all she could do to keep up the rather stiff pressure they'd thrown on the enemy. She did not have many spare resources just lying around. Well, baked stuff, anyway. Certainly no medieval witch ever had anything like the scale of ingredients that Willow had acquired. But she'd had limited time to bake things.

So it would not be very long at all before her minimal guard force would be totally wiped out.

Fire was the bane of candy witches. It was not the only bane, but it was probably their ultimate one. Sugar burned, so did syrups and virtually all of what they used were based on things that fire ate more greedily than people.

If it couldn't burn, you couldn't eat it. And if a person couldn't eat it, a candy witch often didn't make it, as that was the basis for most of their powers. There were exceptions, but not terribly many of them.

The gummy golem Willow had placed on guard was literally torn apart by the slavering beasts who attacked it, and its pieces fell, burning, to the ground.

A gummy golem could handle penetrating attacks and ignore blunt trauma, but the jaws of its attackers were meant to rend and tear into chunks, which was what it was vulnerable to.

But Willow had begun surrounding her base with many types of guardians. And she had already begun the tactically wise step of having varieties of these, so what could defeat one would not do as well against another.

Her sugar porcupines were the next step in the 'scissors, rock, paper' response, because anything that rent or tore its foes would find it almost impossible to hurt them through their impressive defense of hard candy quills; which she'd already rigged to fire at their enemies.

It was a good move, tactically sound... yet utterly useless.

When those porcupines emerged from shallow caves to meet the threat, the pack of hellhounds that had destroyed the gummy golem bounded up with howls of fury, the fiery auras over those black furred bodies igniting those guardian's quills before the demonic dogs were in any danger.

So her sugar guardians burned, and the terrified gingerbread men fled after their first few lofted fireball gumballs exploded uselessly against the fire-immune demonic attackers.

Then those hellhounds resumed following the traces of scent left by the last gingerbread men to attack the mayor's interests.

I O I O I

The alarms had no sooner sounded than the Scoobies were watching this confrontation on a giant mirror.

"So, did you put television cameras out there?" Amy asked her redhaired friend, impressed with the signal resolution.

"That wouldn't explain the mobile point of view," Cathy corrected, being more sure this was something magical.

Still concerned with the scene, Willow gave her a distracted shrug. "Granny taught me this trick. Most practitioners of candy magic develop ingenious and effective scrying methods out of simple necessity - they are trapped in their houses and both like and need to see what is going on in the outside world. It's almost a calling card of this business to be almost perfect in some form of scrying. Practice would make us so, if nothing else."

"So, what are you going to use to stop them?" Marcie asked.

Willow shook her head, again concentrating on the scene where the last of her sugar porcupines were burning away. "If you are asking what I have that can't be burned, the answer is 'nothing'. Everything I bake is flammable. It's one weakness of this style I have no clue how to overcome."

"Gingerbread men carrying pot lids to use as shields?" Amy suggested, but Willow once again shook her head.

"Against one, maybe. But this is a pack, and packs of dogs encircle what they are fighting." Xander spoke absently. He was absorbed with the tactical implications of what they were viewing as those demon dogs resumed the chase. "Shields only defend from one direction."

Willow was also worried. "Besides, even if my candies were fast enough not to be encircled, those hounds are giving off auras of fire, and can breathe out cones of more. Demons have always been a big risk to candy witches, so Granny insisted I learn about some varieties, and hellhounds have always been one of our worst dangers. They can find our lairs, defeat most of our guards by heat alone, and frankly terrify gingerbread men. How fast they are makes no difference. Gingerbread men are cowards at heart, and only go to a fight they feel certain would be easy and fun. Hellhounds are neither."

Xander's eyes had been focused on the distant scene, watching as those dogs paused to snif the ground before bounding on. "They are tracking us by scent, so sooner or later they're going to find our base."

"Pity those rains have stopped." Amy frowned. "They could have washed the scent trails away."

"It's not an accident, I'm sure," the heir of Zorro intently supplied. "They had it rain prodigiously when they felt that it could benefit them, and it stopped when it could have hindered them."

"Weather magic is not easy stuff," Cathy raised her brows, impressed.

Willow nodded. "Yes, but it does exist, and if anyone had the specialists on tap who could do large amounts of it, it would be someone like our mayor, who from all we've read, is very well connected."

"Okay," Xander straightened up tall. "We have two things we need to do at once - get someone out there to stop those hell hounds, and I'm volunteering, and we also need to obscure the scent trails so they lead so MANY places that it's all but impossible to trace them here. Willow, can you send your candy goons all over, doing more strikes and, I dunno, just... stuff?"

The redhead smiled over her childhood friend reverting to form under this pressure. He hadn't always been the cool, collected hero he was now. It was nice and soothing, reassuring her to see bits of that still remained.

"Can you kill hellhounds?" Cathy questioned seriously.

"Well, a pencil launcher won't do it," he replied with an easy grin. "Too bad our nightlife isn't all vampires, all of the time. It would be easy, then."

"Eh. Oh, well. Comes with the Hellmouth options package." Jesse shrugged. "You wouldn't want our fight against evil to be boring, would you?"

"I'll go with you," Amy volunteered, snatching up her bow. "They might burn arrows, but not before they punch through flesh."

"Are you sure about that?" Her mother worried.

The daughter taught by Robin Hood gave her mother a solemn nod. "Yes. I saw the rate at which they burned those candy golems. Sugar burns better than wood, yet still if my arrows were sugar they'd last long enough to strike and do damage. Arrows have punching power air-launched quills do not."

"Good," Xander gave a decisive nod, before turning back to Willow. "You work out something to disguise our trails. We'll take care of the immediate danger."

I O I O I

The longbow in use during Robin's time could easily kill a man at a distance of over four hundred yards. To qualify as an English longbow archer of medieval times required passing a test where you were required to hit a man sized target twelve out of twelve times at a distance of two hundred yards. That's greater accuracy and greater range than is expected of modern riflemen.

Only snipers even approach that standard of accuracy, and that's using high-power scopes, not the standard Mark-I Eyeball. So it becomes a little easier to understand how ridiculous amounts of practice and training were required to produce these men.

However Robin's band were all accepted as exceptional archers, every one, and Robin more than most. In fact he was often held to be the finest archer in all England, and he'd wanted to pass every bit of that skill on to his many times removed great granddaughter.

Amy had four arrows in the air at the same time, and the first dozen hellhounds vanished as they got pierced in a single sheet of incoming fire.

"Well, that was incredibly easy!" the Merry Maid declared.

"Don't speak so soon," Xander gave warning in a dreaded whisper.

More howls broke over the hills and cresting a ridge four dozen more of the flame-wreathed hellhounds appeared. Accompanying them, making the four hundred pound dogs look like puppies around its ankles, was a creature so four, so cruel, that there was no chance they could fight with it and live.

"They made those up!" Amy declared, indignantly pointing a finger at the creature.

"Unfortunately not," Xander disagreed, hunching lower behind a rock, just peeking over the edge of it. "C'mon, we've got to get out of here fast. Can you take out the hellhounds accompanying it? That way at least it couldn't track us, and we'd stand a good chance of losing it in these hills."

Sighing, the blonde shook her head. "Sorry, I only brought two dozen arrows. It was twice as many as I thought I'd need."

"I don't suppose you can hit the big one?"

"I've got the archery training, but not the muscles. It was my mind that did all of the work, not my body, so I'm stuck with a simple deer-killing bow, not one that can punch through both sides of an armored knight and his horse. Sorry, but the big, armor-plated monster is just a bit out of my league. I could easily hit him, but I wouldn't hurt him."

Xander drew himself up. "Well then, back to plan one. You shoot all of the demon dogs and we lose the big one in these hills."

"I told you, I don't have enough arrows!" Amy objected to this plan.

The heir of Zorro summoned his ancestor's horse and swung up into the saddle, tossing her a dramatic grin as he settled. "Don't worry. Getting them back is my job."

And with that he spurred the mighty steed and galloped off to the scene of the first dozen hellhounds' destruction.

Steeling herself, and trying hard not to think of the danger he'd be in rushing out to recover her ammo for her, Amy raised her bow and pulled the nock back to her ear.

One thing was for sure. She couldn't afford to miss!

In the near distance the balrog roared, shadow and flame made flesh.

I O I O I

"I don't know what else to DO!!" Willow cried in frustration.

"Well, raiding a medical supply warehouse was probably a good idea. At least we can set up a clinic down here if they get injured," Marcie tried to be as helpful and reassuring as possible. Wanting to do something, Willow had sent out a raiding party of her super-fast two legged cookies to fetch back some medicine. Although on the scale of the theft they were perpetrating, raiding a major medical supply distribution center, they'd more likely be able to build several hospitals than patch up one boy's owies. But hospitals weren't what Willow wanted. She wanted her Xander back, whole and in one piece!

Luckily it was Jesse who was able to step forward with some ideas. "Okay, they are out there right now," he tried to disguise a wince as Xander just barely ducked under a snap of the balrog's whip as he dropped to hang out of the side of the saddle, scooping low to snatch up three arrows out of the corpses of the hellhounds they'd gotten lodged in, pounding by on a charge as fast as the legendary steed Tornado could carry him.

Willow was crying, unable to look away from her mirror. The films had not done the ancient menace justice, and Jesse had to wonder what ties to the occult Tolkien might have had to portray the beast so accurately.

Shaking himself out of a momentary stupor, he continued, "Anyway, they are out there to buy us time to obscure our tracks, and I don't think that more raids bringing stuff to our cave is going to do anything but paint more lines pointing here."

"Then what do you suggest we do?" Marcie challenged.

Jesse gave her a prankster grin. "Why, paint lines going elsewhere, of course! Didn't you play D&D? If you have foes tracking your scent, and you can't make your scent go away, then make sure it's found everywhere!"

Smiling, he leaned forward, pressing the idea. "They are tracking by scent the trails of our gingerbread men, and right now those trails all lead back to a single point - here. But if we send them out again, not to go anywhere near that fight, but to run up and down and around, all over these hills, then instead of following a road they'll be trying to untangle spaghetti! Don't you see? It won't be an arrow pointing at us, it'll be a spider web covering this whole area, and if we make it dense enough they'll never find the center."

Willow flinched and cried out, hands covering her mouth as Xander's dash was caught by two hellhounds who had interposed themselves to stop his escape. His full-tang carbon steel sword turned out to have the fault that carbon steel was amazingly brittle; once more a show weapon and a display piece more than a functional piece of armament. He sliced into one of the demon dogs with it and the sword broke before the gnarled hide did, proving once more that halfway decent was in no way an acceptable standard for swords.

High carbon just wasn't tempered steel. It makes a big difference in weight, balance and durability as well as the ability for it to retain an edge, and he knew enough from having read those books to know that by now. They needed real weapons, and they needed them yesterday.

That, and some protective amulets and things would go real well about now.

Luckily he was able to fight his way clear regardless, driving off the fiery hounds with splashes of holy water, then another dash of it over his shoulder into the face of the balrog who'd nearly approached close enough to grab.

But that exhausted what he'd carried as far as holy water supplies.

"What if they look for traces?" Marcie quipped, trying hard to draw attention back to the problem Xander was risking his life to grant them time for fixing.

"Then leave those everywhere as well!" Jesse shouted, throwing his arms into the air. "Have them dig holes, mess stuff up, transplant bushes just for the sake of it and collect litter for all I care! If they are looking for our marks on the countryside, then better to have too many than too few! That way at least they'd have to get detectives in to try and figure out which mean something and which don't, and Sunnydale is remarkably short on police detectives just about now!"

Now Marcie smirked. "Yeah, and I don't think they'd care to call the FBI in to investigate a couple of gingerbread men."

Jesse nodded. "They'd be interested in the thefts, but couldn't bear to think of the true nature of the perpetrators. And, unable to believe in the nature of the criminal, they'd be next to useless at tracking the crime."

"But... if they kill all of the hellhounds..." Willow couldn't take her crying eyes off the scene depicted on her giant scrying mirror as Xander turned and charged the demons again, this time spraying them ahead of time with his  
pencil launcher - this one outfitted with better drive wheels and engine.

It couldn't kill them, but he was firing at eyes.

"There will be more," Marcie regretfully shook her head. "If there's one thing you guys have shown me, it's that the forces of evil have numbers on their side. So if this works, they'll just summon more of them."

That sobered Jesse. "Yeah, and laying spaghetti trails will just delay them. I don't know how we'll deal with these things permanently."

Zorro-Xander had just ridden back to Amy, and the archer had loosed the recovered eight shafts, piercing half the remaining hellhounds and pinning them to the ground. Things were getting harder for them as many of her arrows had broken during impact, or while Xander recovered them, so there were fewer good shafts to bring back to her each time.

The balrog had also stepped on a few, and more than a couple had burned up in one fiery aura or another. So ammo was getting scarce.

Marcie herself winced at the sight of Xander riding off yet again. "Yeah. If Willow's Grandma couldn't beat them, then I don't know we'll do."

Jesse folded his arms and declared, "We'd better do something, because Xander is out there risking his life buying us time, and so far we haven't done anything constructive to show for all the danger he's been through."

Suddenly galvanized, Willow stood up, firmly declaring through her tears, "I'm more powerful than Granny ever was, because I'm half the age she was when she'd really started to get a handle on her skills and made her first lair."

"So what are we going to do?" Both of her friends turned to her curiously.

The redhaired candy witch hiccuped, wiping away her tears. Her Xander was going to win, and she'd use the time he'd bought them to cover their trails! "First thing is we'll do as Jesse said. I'll send the gingerbread men all over, up and down these hills laying trails."

The witch paused as other thoughts hit her, then she smiled. "In fact," she hiccuped again and had to furiously scrub away a new wash of wetness, "I was going to say I was worried by all the recent rain having left puddles and streams, but I just thought of a way to make use of that! And a supply of good water is very important to proper baking!"

I O I O I

Unlike vampires, balrogs did not come with a handy list of weaknesses. In the one account they had of one, it'd even wiped out a powerful nation composed of thousands of well-armed dwarves. Dwarves were not stupid, they'd have tried more things that whacking on it with sticks.

Among the very first things they would have tried would've been to collapse tunnels on it, crushing it with a few million tons of rocks. So it was a very real possibility that the demon could not be hurt by mere physical damage because dwarves excel at dishing that out in any number of inventive ways.

If dwarves were famous for anything, that was it. Gold and gems were part of it, but they were universally regarded as tough fighters, and they built fortresses better than anybody, and the whole aim of a fort was to drop so much hurt on the enemy that they'd rather do anything than attack you.

That one of these balrogs could wipe out the largest and wealthiest dwarven nation of a world pretty much by itself should be able to scare anybody.

Also, in the one account they had of one of these things, during its fight with Gandalf it got dropping into a massive underground lake. And it was part fire. So if massive amounts of water didn't hurt it, they didn't know what to try.

So the Scoobies just accepted that they weren't going to beat it. They didn't even plan to try until after performing a great deal of research into how.

And until then they were going to hide.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Balrogs are very nasty things, and the only sure cure for one is a Gandalf, which they don't happen to have. Actually, not even Gandalf was a sure cure. It came close, per the story, and none of them are even close to his level of accomplishment.

But then, that wouldn't be the first demon in the Buffy universe that it took an army and a couple of Slayers to destroy. 


	23. Chapter 23

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Twenty-Three

by Lionheart

I O I O I

If you want to obscure a few real clues, leave thousands of false ones.

The Scoobies couldn't erase their trails in any meaningful sense. So the only strategy that might conceivably work was Jesse's spaghetti comment about spreading trails all over leading nowhere.

Willow agreed with Jesse's plan. But, inspired by his litter comment, decided to be productive about it. After all, there was no point in randomly plucking up bushes to transplant them when you could instead be doing stuff that could potentially be useful later.

And, of course, do harm to their enemies. Perhaps both at the same time.

So Willow sent out her candy minions to race about at supersonic speeds to do something about it. She was happy to set fire to half of Sunnydale (the Mayor's half, obviously), collapse all of the caves and lairs connected to the sewage system, repave all the streets in town, plant candy canes she'd been preparing as dual light poles/vampire repellent along both major streets and in all other ways transform the town and surrounding local environment so thoroughly that not even natives would recognize the place if they'd left it.

In the past hundred years the era of modern man had tremendous feats of construction. However the mountains around Sunnydale had not seen much more than a few roads go through during that period. No one had felt the need, beyond stringing a few power lines. So they remained barren and desolate, and because of that desolation were thought of no use to anyone.

But then again, it was easy to forget that mighty works like the pyramids had been built by bunches of guys using chisels and ropes, and that in all of modern history man still hadn't built as many roads as ancient Rome had done - who'd used bunches of guys with shovels and buckets to do it.

A horde of gingerbread men wielding shovels the size of teaspoons might have been lacking on size, but they more than made up for it in sheer speed.

That, explosive gumballs, and the fact that they just didn't get tired.

On Willow's orders her gingerbread minions began landscaping those nearby coastal mountains like they were decorating giant cakes, carving tunnels that led nowhere in particular, leaving behind roads that wound around going nowhere just to get some false evidence out there, terracing foothills and digging out new beds for previously nonexistent lakes.

That entire section of mountains was being done over in construction.

And creating resources could help everyone. For example, water was scarce and precious in Southern California. So Willow sent out her minions digging ditches and gullies to collect the runoff of the latest rains and form streams leading together into giant catchbasins and reservoirs, just so there would be more lakes and water resources available - it wasn't like it did people any good to have all of that fresh water run down gutters into the sea!

There was nothing preventing this sort of action. Techniques existed to turn even the most barren territory into productive farmland, and it created value to do so. But both public and private institutions with the money to do those sort of major public projects often found better uses for their wealth.

This sort of thing was usually the responsibility of government, but they did very little of it. And creating resources on this scale was outside the scope of most private individuals; the few who had the ability could make more money on other investments, so their time and business got spent on more profitable ventures. Playing the stock market was felt to be an easier and faster way to have your money make more money. Who cared about putting in a new lake that would be providing benefit over hundreds of years? The short term net would be small enough you'd need most of that time to repay the initial investment.

Government, whose responsibility this sort of project was, was so wasteful, corrupt and short-sighted it rarely did major long term public works projects like that. Usually they just addressed short-term need in the cheapest, most expedient way possible. The people in power were too busy toadying to special interest lobbies to do any of the genuinely good for everyone things.

So, in short, while possible, projects of this nature generally didn't get done. Most private people didn't have the money or the power, and government by and large did not have the inclination, too busy padding their own pockets.

But Willow was happy to provide, seeing as how the massive works involved would carpet the whole area with changes, and thus make the few changes actually involved in hiding her lair pathetically easy to conceal.

Willow was really showing her power in that she was controlling hundreds of gingerbread men, where most candy witches could barely manage a handful, if any. That particular variety of candy minion were rather infamous as being difficult to manage - in fact, the fairy tale that describes them was all about the thing running away from the woman who'd baked it, without giving the witch a second glance.

Willow's Explosive Fireball Gumballs had greater force than a US Army hand grenade where for most witches in her style they more closely resembled Pop Rocks. But that was her youth working, not natural ability. If she'd been five years younger they would've been more like blocks of C4.

Different styles of magic had different 'gotchas' and requirements. Natural ability barely entered into Candy Magic at all, whereas in most other styles ones inborn talent for manipulating unseen forces was crucial.

Similarly, magical energy drawn out of one's environment was key to a wide variety of styles, but did not matter to candy magic in the slightest. It was a highly unusual form in that youth and skill was pretty much all that mattered. Well, that and one's available ingredients.

Quite a bit like potion making on that account. Ingredients, recipes available and skill mattered more than any innate talent in that field, too.

There were many different ways magic could be practiced and it seemed each school leaned heavily toward its own unique combination of a few particular methods. There was plenty of reason for that, as it enabled most spellcasters to develop far more quickly than would otherwise be the case.

After all, very few scientists managed to learn everything either.

In many ways one's magic power bore strong resemblances to muscle power. Both of them had to be developed to be truly strong, no matter what your native gifts were. Also, that strength could be developed in different ways. A strong swimmer wasn't going to necessarily be an impressive weightlifter, and weightlifters generally made bad sprinters or gymnasts. Body strength was often developed differently for different sports, just as magical power was not necessarily developed the same for all the different mystic arts.

Specialization had its advantages.

There were different kinds of magical power just as there were different types of physical power. Being a good javelin thrower didn't necessarily make you any good as a marathon runner, and being an accomplished boxer didn't mean you had any value as a diver or a skier. The same was true of magic. A successful necromancer didn't necessarily know anything about divination or transmutation. Likewise, one built up strength for blasting one's foes apart with lightning bolts a bit differently than one advanced one's alchemy skill.

A good athlete who has the discipline to train for one sport can often apply that to train in another, just as most mages can apply their study time to more than one mystical art. But some had funky or even contradictory requirements. For example the tremendous bulk of muscle that makes for a great weightlifter is a positive bane to marathon runners. And, just the same as that worked, the corruption necessary to be a skilled demonologist was a hindrance to working with fairy magic or theurgy.

All styles had their strengths and their drawbacks, too.

Candy magic was one of those with what all other styles regarded a funky or even unique requirement. The relative youth of the caster was of primary importance to this art. Where in other styles that didn't matter at all, here it was crucial.

Willow's gingerbread men would not even be as fast as they were had she not been so young while baking them. They'd still have been fast, so long as she'd remained young enough to bake them at all, for that was the nature of the recipe, but certainly not racing about at quite such absurd velocities.

Incidentally, while much of modern cooking, especially in the factories, is far from the original, and far from good, it is also true that the modern world has techniques that were not available to medieval cooks, from refrigeration (ice-cream, slushies, etc.), to much more precise control of temperature and timing, to simply new concepts (pizza and pasta both came to Europe post-dark ages, and of course, chocolate would have been wholly unknown to a dark-age witch in Europe, though it is possible, as evidenced by Baba Yaga, that witches may have drawn from a wider pool of knowledge than your average schmoe).

But magic was also a skill, much like singing. There are those who have more talent than others, and quite a few who never bother to learn, but anyone CAN. Just like just about anyone CAN become a pilot; some might require more instruction than others, and there are a heck of a lot of people who never get the opportunity, and there are quite a few that even if you could train them they'd never be any good at it, but it CAN be done. Scarcity of instruction was a big limiter there, though not the only one.

As for how fast they'd begun to learn things, Mr. Mage Dude had started a spark - there was going to be *something* there from the very beginning, but you aren't going to even be able to roast hot dogs on it and Xander knew he'd be some time coaxing that flame higher and higher, as obviously being able to handle an everyday vamp was just the tip of the local threat iceberg.

Then again, you can scratch out a simple tune on a violin on your first lesson, and a baby can hold the wheel as you drive down a road. True competence and *effective* magic or martial arts for most of them was a long way down the road, but given the amount of fuel poured into his brain he'll be getting that fire going much faster than an ordinary student would without.

Otherwise, what was the point behind all that memorization and study spells? I mean, they had to give him SOME advantage, right?

I O I O I

"What happened?" Jesse shouted as Xander rode his horse into their hideout.

Xander answered while helping Amy down from his mount. "We killed all of the initial hellhound force and outraced the balrog, riding double. Luckily pookas leave no trails, scent or otherwise. So, what amazingly insightful plan have you guys thoughtfully composed in my absence?"

Jesse spread his hands helplessly. "We got nothing."

"Can't we just hide?" Marcie interjected desperately. "Fake our deaths or something?"

They all paused as they thought about the ramifications of that.

"You know," Xander postulated, "it's possible to fake your death once. But once you do it, if your enemy finds you're still around, next time he'll come after you even harder, and will be less easy to convince if you want to drop out of sight again. This is something where, if we do it, we've got to make it stick. Otherwise it just makes things worse for us in the long run. If we want to drop out of sight of someone who could destroy us, we've to stay out of sight. Because we won't be able to drop out of sight again."

Willow, who'd only recently ran up to grasp him in a hug, responded, "Well, I guess I could continue to practice candy magic, so long as I do it in secret. We could still buff ourselves that way."

Jesse wondered aloud, "Couldn't we change our methods and pretend to be a different group of heroes?"

Marcie grinned, "You know? I could totally get with that. I could so totally see us tweaking the nose of a statue in our mountaintop mansion, sliding down a candy cane pole leading to the mysterious Candy Cave racing off in the Candy Mobile to the theme of the old Batman TV series."

Amy hopped right on that idea. "You know? I like that, although we'd have to erase any obvious candy-theme as it would tip them off and make things too scary again."

Cathy brought them all back down to Earth. "Yes, well, unfortunately Batman was a comic book whose primary details were written before we became a culture obsessed with tracking everything, all of the time. The study of the science of forensics means you couldn't get away with any of that now."

Xander nodded soberly. "Yeah. If the police wanted to find him, it would be a simple matter of tracking his car down to his garage by the simple expedient of placing a guy on watch the last few dozen places it was sighted until they sight it again - then note where it goes that time until you've tracked it all the way down that lonely mountain road to where he cuts off it to go to his cave. With no computer records to hack, you'd bag him inside of a week of average patrols. No, if we want to go that route, we'd have to do something like the Gummi Bears, with so many secret entrances scattered all over the place that you can never tell where they're going to appear or disappear from. And even then we'd have to take precautions against using certain entrances and exits too often. A hole convenient enough to use all the time is trouble, it creates habits and habits are too easy to track by a bureaucracy that logs everything."

"We'd also need a way of closing off any secret entrances that DID get discovered, destroying them so they couldn't lead an army to us." Amy added professionally, having trained for evading sheriffs.

"Not just that," Willow sorrowed, "armies are something to be concerned about, but so are archeologists. If we collapse a tunnel, odds are the mayor can call in guys who could tell him what direction it was going in, and then he could use miners to excavate and reopen the tunnel."

Xander was nodding, a surprised look on his face. "So our secret tunnels have got to be twisty and windy, so they don't point in any kind of usable direction. This is sounding more like Gummi Bears all of the time - those Quick Carts of theirs that makes leaps in and out of ground and jump through subterranean waterfalls and things would be plenty difficult to track."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Yes, well, ideally we don't want to tip off anyone that we are traveling underground, as a person with the resources of our mayor might just go into mining on a colossal scale, hoping to sink a shaft that intersects one of our main tunnels by accident."

"Less likely than you'd think." Xander corrected. "Mountains are big places, and we've got a lot of them around here. Plus mining is a slow process. We could hack into the mine computers in the operations shed to find out where they're headed to either redirect their workers slightly or relocate our own operations. That's a game that could go on for a hundred years, easy. A vast waste of resources, if you ask me, and the mayor got rich by backing winning games, not throwing it away on poor investments. Rather than dropping random bombs in a desert, hoping to hit an Arab, he'd try other schemes, ones more likely to return him a payout."

Jesse shrugged. "Well, people are apt to do surprising things. Let's all just work to avoid getting hunted in the first place, and I think the first thing to do there is to confuse our enemies as to who is actually opposing them."

Marcie grinned. "Plus expand the secret base. I'm kind of married to the idea of taking roller coaster rides all across the valley as our secret rapid transit system. It sounds fun."

Willow acquiesced. "Ok, so gummi-style Quick Tunnels stay on the agenda. I've got to agree, they sound useful. I just hope they don't wind up costing us more than they're worth in the end."

Cathy tapped her chin, thinking. "Any delay in the enemy finding us at all provides us with more time to prepare, gather artifacts and collect more spells. Hopefully, by the time anything gets discovered we'll be stronger than the mayor, and can take him out rather than be hunted by him again."

Jesse smirked. "That's kind of the point of having a secret base: a place to work on projects on a bigger scale that we could manage in furtive moments stolen between a teacher's glances in the High School chemistry lab."

Willow put flour-covered hands on aproned hips. "Well, to do that properly I'm going to need resources we don't have yet - things like milk production. You'd be amazed at the amount of dairy products finding their ways into cakes and candies, and I don't want our mayor to wonder why six High School students need a thousand gallons of cream and fifty tons of milk solids; and stockpiles are no good, I could go through that much in a week."

"A fair point." Xander agreed with a roguish grin.

Amy blinked. "You know, one of the targets we haven't hit yet, because it was a lower priority than active hostiles, is a dairy farm outside of town. The demon who owns the place runs it as a blood factory, both human and bovine, to feed the vampires. But they do own an actual herd of dairy cows."

Willow cocked her head and considered. "I can get a cave ready to keep them in pretty quick, and Don Diego did teach Xander how to care for cattle..."

Xander met Amy's eyes. "I think that's our next target, don't you agree?"

"Oh, I'm with you on that." The girl grinned.

Cathy smiled triumphantly.

"Sweet!" Jesse crowed. "We get to add cattle rustling to our long list of crimes!"

"Okay," Xander gestured to Marcie, then to Willow. "We'll add 'fake our deaths' as a solid Plan B, and prepare for it to fall back on, just in case. But I don't want to give up entirely on winning the fight currently before us. Any ideas how we might pull off the defeat of a balrog?"

"Well, it is part fire," Willow mused aloud. "You have to wonder if the foam used by the fire department to put out fuel fires would work here."

Cathy shook her head. "If immersion in a lake wouldn't do it, fire fighting foam isn't likely to."

Jesse leaned back, grinning like mad. "Where's a pumper truck full of holy water when you need it?" Then he stood taller, getting a glimmer of an idea. "You know what? Holy Water Cannons ROCK! I should, like, learn how to make holy water, soonest."

"As our resident... well, closest thing we've got to a priest, that would be your priority," Willow agreed.

Xander had crossed his arms, leaning back against a wall considering these suggestions, the empty sheath of his sword limp against his hip. "Also I have to wonder if setting fire to half the town (the mayor's half) would distract the bad guys enough to obscure our trail a bit to give us more time to work."

"Already done," Jesse gloated.

"Our little gingerbread pyros started that before you got back." Marcie also was pleased to be able to report.

The masked bandit nodded, head back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling as he thought. "Good. So we can assume that should delay reinforcements a bit, as the summoners are otherwise occupied with not burning to death."

"I'm expecting they'll make it rain again any moment now," Cathy told them confidently. "The Gingerbread attacks on the town are just too severe for the mayor to ignore. He'll have to do something to curtail those."

"And rain has been their best tactic for that thus far," Xander agreed, nodding before he sprouted a wide grin. "Still, the moment they do that..."

"We can withdraw all of our candy minions while the rain is there erasing our trails," Amy concluded, approvingly. "Still, all that does is put us in a position of stalemate - one where we can't send out candy minions for fear of laying more trails, but they can't find us for lack of those trails."

Xander threw himself down into a marshmallow padded seat. "Well, a draw is better than a defeat. But I can see that quickly becoming a situation where we bake all of the minions we can, while our enemies summon all of the demons THEY can. And, this being the Hellmouth, I fear we may be at a bit of a disadvantage in the minion arms race. Sooner or later we'll run out of the ingredients we've stockpiled. But I don't think anyone's ever run out of hell dimensions. Better to fake our deaths than go into a Candy Cold War. That way at least they won't be looking for us."

Amy sighed. "That takes us back to Plan B again."

After a moment of intense silence he looked around again. "So, does anyone have a good candidate for a Plan A?"

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Frankly, I've had enough going on at home lately that only the easy stuff has been getting written, and Partially Kissed Hero has been easy, so that's had the lion's share of my down time writing.

Still, I do hope to return to plugging along on other stories, like this. 


	24. Chapter 24

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Twenty-Four

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Mayor Richard Wilkins the Third (also the First and Second) stood sheltered under an umbrella he was holding over himself during the downpour, suit neat and trim, looking out over a post-apocalypse Sunnydale, and smiled.

The nightmare was over.

Just hours ago his balrog had been lured onto a freeway, chasing after bait onto a mountain pass where there wasn't any room to dodge to either side, then rammed by a semi trailer truck packed full of explosives. The resultant blast had destroyed the pass and would leave the northern route out of town closed perhaps for years.

The Candy Witch had assumed, falsely, that would destroy the balrog.

Obviously acting on the assumption that she'd eliminated the last resistance, the witch had gone ahead and erected her Gingerbread Mansion, loaded with defenses and minions, at the intersection of Chocolate Ave and Candy Cane Lane - Streets she had renamed when her gingerbread minions had torn down and rebuilt half the town.

Then, just as she'd been settling down, his balrog had returned.

Just moments ago Deputy Mayor Alan Finch, one of his few employees to survive the apocalypse, had reported the kill was confirmed. The burned up corpse of the thirteen year old girl they'd pulled out of the wreckage of her torn apart candy mansion showed evidence of candy magic.

The Candy Witch was dead. The crisis over.

Sad, really, Mayor Wilkins thought as he gazed over the devastation of town, half of which was burned and gutted, fires only now dying down under the torrential rains, and the other half substantially modified in incomplete candy construction projects. If this was the type of thing she was capable of, he would far rather have had her working for him.

The entire face of the surrounding landscape had begun to be changed.

Undirected, her gingerbread minions had continued on in what they'd been doing, construction projects inside and out of town, and had not sought protection from the rains. They were even now slagging down into soggy bread, despite the meager protection of their bubblegum raincoats.

The fact that her burgeoning candy empire was falling apart, running down like an unwound toy without her direction, was final evidence of her demise.

It was time to pay his experts and release them so he could begin to pursue his own construction projects. For the first time in nearly a hundred years he would have to seriously devote himself to the management of this town and developing its infrastructure.

If his ascension were not so close that would be enough to keep him busy well into his incarnation as Richard Wilkins the Fourth. The town budget was not nearly enough to cover changes as extensive as demanded to correct all of the damage. He would be pleasantly surprised if it was half what was required to patch over even the most critical holes.

A replacement police department would have to be hired, as his old one was virtually extinct. And that meant going to Los Angeles and making it known that he was offering promotions to the demon-friendly officers there if they were willing to relocate north.

He would need a fire department too, and city services. The mayoral palace was intact, kept that way by potent spells, but his staff had suffered some rather distressing losses.

If his guesses were accurate, he had only a bare few handfuls of demons loyal to him in the entire town. And not many more demons beyond that. The ones with better survival instincts had fled early on during the siege. He'd have to send some of what remained down to the graveyards to collect the recent fledglings about to hatch there.

Oddly enough, despite the recent difficulties with fledglings not rising as often as they should, he currently had far more vampires in their graves than out. The recent firestorms had been particularly deadly to that easily-burned race. And if he was to have a domestic supply of vampires, those recently awakened would have to be hand-raised rather than left to wander on their own devices. And that meant blood supplies, and handlers.

And that was but one step in the recovery process.

Just restarting essential town services was going to require obtaining loans, and that meant demon bankers, and that would draw uncomfortably on his collateral of souls. So even that would be limited.

As much as he'd like to erase every sign of this witch's presence and her recent attack, that would not be possible without expending favors he could not possibly spend without endangering his ascension - which he simply would not do.

Oh well. He'd see what he could do selling water to Los Angeles. One of the few benefits of this recent attack was that witch had caused lakes and reservoirs to be dug all over his jurisdiction, and the sprawling metropolis to his immediate south was always hungry for new sources of fresh water. In fact, he was certain they'd offer to lay the necessary pipelines themselves.

And that thin and reedy rain shaman he'd hired was a pleasant enough fellow. Mayor Wilkins was certain he could be convinced to stay on for a decent price, and between plenty of rain and reservoirs he'd have a decent income for seeing to recovery and catastrophe relief. Enough to patch the worst holes and keep the town running, at any rate.

Truly, he didn't need it to do more than that.

One of the mayor's few remaining flunkies got off the phone. "The insurance company has agreed to payment for the trucks ambushed bringing restock to our jewelry stores."

"Excellent!" the mayor cried, rejoicing. "Then, back to business, I suppose. The most immediate thing should be to build up our vampire numbers again. I suggest we hold a party for the young people of our town, with music and dancing - and very locked doors. What bands are in town?"

Another flunky presented him with a list.

Mayor Wilkins could not suppress a chuckle, pointing to an entry. "I like this one: 'Dingos Ate My Baby'. Make sure they attend." He paused for a moment, as if building up to a joke, "And make sure to request they practice the Oingo Boingo song 'Dead Man's Party', because no one will be leaving this one alive."

I O I O I

"Crackerjack boxes? Why are we eating crackerjacks?" Jesse asked, peering at his unopened box as he turned it upside-down, wondering at its secrets.

"It's necessary for the spell," Willow apologized, finishing handing them out before instructing, "Eat the whole thing. After the first half you'll find the prize, then finish the box off to show you accept. It works a bit like a fortune cookie that way."

"So, what is the prize? Or is it something we're not supposed to ask?" Cathy wondered, looking to their redhaired expert.

They were all feeling a little more kindly toward Amy's mother as she'd been the one to supply the zombie of a thirteen year old girl to act as their fake candy witch in that sacrificial gingerbread mansion.

"Not at all." Willow shook her head brightly. "It's our new lairs. I made them into rings. We don't want to wear licorice bands or rock candy, they'd give us away. And gold is just too hard to enchant in this style normally, so that's why the crackerjacks. It made it possible to enchant something as small as rings to be our lairs. My limit without this would be jackets or, if I struggled very hard, hats. I used some of our stolen lab equipment to synthesize artificial gemstones for us. That made it easier, as I was mixing ingredients under heat. That made it close enough to baking that I was able to apply some tricks and work in more magic - enough to get this working at such a small size, anyway."

Xander absorbed all this knowledge before adding, "We may want those other lairs as backups. If we're wearing a few different lairs then we are less likely to encounter a circumstance where we lose all of them. A pickpocket could steal a ring, but he'll leave your jacket behind."

"Just don't undress for doctor visits." Marcie joked.

"About that," Xander remarked, raising a finger. "I think we should all train to become our own doctors."

All eyes turned to him.

He shrugged. "We've captured examples of all of the machines, and Willow's magic can keep the drugs from spoiling forever, so we can set up our own secret clinics, but it's not like we can hire anybody to use them on us. And as this recent battle highlighted: getting injured is a real possibility out there."

"We are practicing those healing cantrips," Jesse protested.

"Yeah, but we all know those start small and work up - only none of us have any major injuries to be working on," Amy countered. "So we'll have upper limits on what we can do with those."

Marcie watched as Jesse shuddered and had to ask, "Why are you opposed to this? I should've thought you'd be pleased."

"Doctors don't get to look at the pretty bits." Willow summarized.

Xander nodded along. "Medicine is not a happy profession. You don't get to see people who are at their best, looking good, and feeling high on life. No, if there is anything ugly, grody, disgusting or malodorous, medicine is going to be right there poking and prodding and tweaking it. If there is anything wrong with the human body, you get to stick your face in it, no matter how vile."

Amy scowled. "It's only in the twentieth century that doctors began to be respected. Before that they were regarded much the same as janitors and other professions dealing with ugly, disgusting things no one respectable wanted anything to do with. But the alternative for us may be bleeding out in a dark alley somewhere."

"Exactly," Xander agreed.

"Sorry," Willow apologized for her friend. "Jesse has a great fear of doctors ever since he first started to get flu shots in grade school."

Cathy sat up straighter. "I can get my grandfather's field surgeon's guides from WWI or WWII or thereabouts, after they had discovered several useful principles but before they became too dependent on fancy machines, expensive, high end drugs, or tied up in specialties or bureaucracy. I actually wouldn't trust modern doctors. They hide the figures pretty well, but doctor mistakes cause more deaths in the United States than heart disease, cancer, car accidents or any other cause - there is a reason why malpractice insurance is the biggest bill any doctor pays to stay in business."

All the young teens looked at each other.

"Ok, there goes my counter-argument of 'recruit some guy to be our private doctor'," Marcie admitted.

"At least if we were doing this ourselves we'd have no one else to blame for any mistakes we make," Jesse admitted, resigning himself to this.

Willow nodded brightly. "Working with computers I've found that finding out what the real problem is is most of the difficulty of solving it. Then Xander started us working on cars, and it was the same - know what the problem is and you've done most of the work towards a solution. I imagine if we develop a diagnostic cantrip, then medicine should be pretty easy! Our aura sight is already halfway to being decent diagnosticians, if we learn to use it right."

"Yeah, but then we'd have to practice," Marcie disagreed. "And I don't want anyone untrained getting close to me with knives. Needles are bad enough!"

"There are still plenty of bodies in Sunnydale," Xander intoned soberly. "And working on cadavers is how they teach surgeons in college. Having studied anatomy from books, and a certain amount of medicine, we can do as they do to practice surgery for the sewing up of our own wounds and stuff."

Amy shrugged, asking, "How do the real surgeons learn it? Well, a lot of books (gotcha, our downloads covered that one), a few lectures (mostly just covering over again the stuff in those books, to make sure they don't miss it - in which case this is also covered), and some practical experience... carving up and sewing back together a few dead bodies. I think this is a plan."

"A grody plan," Marcie objected.

"Well, it's gross," Willow admitted. "But the real doctors have to do it, and it is the only way to learn some things... like how to turn theory into practice. So, disgust aside, since we aren't going to be doing trial and error on each other's internal organs, I think we ought to go with Xander to the morgue to begin our medical education."

"After a very slight hypnotism session to get those field surgical manuals down," Xander amended her plan. "But we've already got the anatomy books and a few other medical tomes, so after that we should be good to go."

And so they did.

Early the next morning, before anyone sane would even think of being out and about in this town, standing in one of the Sunnydale mortuaries, deserted between hours, they all listened as Xander finished his lecture on security.

"Now remember: no evidence. The bug-eyed toad demon sleeping in the other room has special eyes that are immune to illusions. I've never seen him here before, so he must be a new hire, or transferred in, or something. So since we don't want people finding suspicious gashes on bodies and wondering what is going on we've got to try those cantrips to seal any cuts we create."

As he concluded his last whispered instructions, they all turned to their selected bodies and began working.

"What kind of a name is Oz, anyway?" Jesse asked, reading the name off the toe tag before he sliced into the corpse before him.

"No idea, but that one has telltale barbecue fork marks in his neck," Xander returned, handing his friend a pencil. "Don't forget to stake him."

"Stake all of them for good measure, just in case," Amy agreed.

I O I O I

The last few weeks before school started were surprisingly quiet as both sides regrouped from the attacks. Increasingly, the frantic pace of battle relaxed as new cataclysms failed to happen and things slowed down for a while.

Jesse did the Ancestor Guide spell and got taught by The Scarlet Pimpernel, remarking him into his own swashbuckling hero. Although, as Jesse pointed out, though both were seen as idiot fops in public and became swashbuckling heroes of daring exploits resisting oppression by night, Sir Percival Blakeney placed far more emphasis on disguises and being a spy in general than Don Diego de la Vega, who was more of a bandit in practice.

This was not to say one was superior to the other. Both had their uses, and each boy delighted not only that their skills so closely matched each other, but that they still had things they could teach each other.

The sword fights between them were already downright breathtaking.

Marcie's own Ancestor Guide experience turned out a surprise for them all. She got trained by Joan of Arc, who shouldn't have been possible, as she died a virgin. But despite not being of direct line, she got Heavenly permission to teach her many times removed niece, and Marcie woke up exuding an aura of holiness that was palpable to the other Scoobies.

Under aura sight, she was a blinding white.

Strangely, this event led to the complete breakup of the budding romantic relationship that was building between her and Jesse. Not that Marcie felt there was anything bad about romance in general (although she declared, contrary to Catholic doctrine, that there was nothing holy about celibacy. Marriage was, she proclaimed, a holy sacrament and God would prefer all of his children be married), but that she no longer felt compatible with Jesse.

The rogue had to admit he felt the same in return. He'd taken to playing the rakish playboy to the hilt and enjoyed flirting more than perhaps anything else. He was also proving good at it, and Marcie's calm, churchlike serenity turned him off just as much as she was by his foppish rakishness. However, she was able to effortlessly bless the holding tanks for the sprinklers in their secret headquarters.

When tested on a captured vampire, the creature dusted after just a couple of drops - the most potent reaction any of them had seen.

Willow was spending most of her time working on their secret base, adding in an appropriate maze of Quick Tunnels festooned with secret doors, trapped blind tunnels leading nowhere, and other elements to confuse pursuit. She also took out time to make car trips to Oregon, Nevada and Baja California, setting up emergency backup headquarters with their own supplies in case the group got driven out of California.

They weren't as developed, but they were there.

They'd already ordered, through the LA drop boxes, another complete set of weapons, these advertised as 'battle ready'. But they didn't put much trust in that. Xander had also directed Willow in making a forge for him to use, and was industriously practicing his metalworking, getting his skills in order so he could make them proper blades.

In other news, Jesse's mother, Jane McNally, passed her Bar exam, vastly increasing that family's income as she took on duties as a lawyer at her firm. Cathy had also increased her income, this time by animating zombies to take jobs at the post office and garbage collection services in their town.

Towards the end of summer when they are no longer feeling so challenged by their other classes, the Scoobies began taking aerobics classes and some yoga courses, once more aping the teachers of them to help master their bodies in flexibility and control.

I O I O I

What Xander is doing in the mortuaries all summer long was so pathetic that it fell below the radar, so to speak. People who were there more or less to mass produce vampires did not expect anything so trivial could be causing a slump in the production line.

They looked for mass tissue damage (a beheaded corpse doesn't make a very good vampire either) or rituals being performed (every so often a few local priests had actually tried this, blessing graves and whatnot trying to keep the dead from becoming restless); but while the authorities of Sunnydale were on the watch for anti-demon groups forming this pathetic little barely-teen boy was just so wimpy, and the acts he did so small, with the magic so low as to be barely... heck, completely undetectable against the background stuff of the Hellmouth plus demonic energies of the rituals THEY performed there, that nothing he was doing could tip off the morgue guys as to what was wrong with their vampire production line.

Like a flat tire on a jeep sitting atop a narrow bridge halting an army behind it, the actual fault was so small, yet it had tremendous effects.

However, all of that changed as the group switched to practicing surgery.

As concerned as the mayor was about increasing the local vampire population to normal levels, the signs they inevitably left behind got noticed, the barely healed over cuts investigated. However, given clear evidence of necromancy in the partially sealed cuts, as well as the host of zombies appearing to apply for government work, it got determined that the disturbance at the morgue was someone was learning anatomy the 'old fashioned way'.

Former Vice-Principal Snyder presented a report to the Mayor's desk. He'd gotten turned despite his protected status during the recent tumult, and so was no longer suitable for his former job. However, on rising, he'd somehow acquired the intelligence and sensibilities of a vampire several dozen years older than the brutish fledgling he ought to have been. The cause was still being investigated (and undead gaining peculiar abilities was one of the things that led investigators to suspect necromancy) but he'd been transferred to the mayor's office, where he was proving himself a valuable aid.

As he presented the file, Snyder summarized the mortuary report. "Dead flesh doesn't heal, nor does it respond well to most healing magics. Ergo, our experts are happy to conclude we have a budding Necromancer in Sunnydale. One who is just learning the trade. And they recommend we make discrete efforts to help the young mage out."

"Excellent!" Mayor Wilkins leaned forward, smile on his face. "Then make sure he has everything he needs to learn the business. Oh, and that DOES mean privacy. Necromancers are a skittish sort, at best. Their specialty is rather unpopular at the best of times, and we wouldn't want to startle this one off to some other training grounds by paying too close attention. In fact, err to the other side if you must. There is plenty of time to rope him in later."

A demonic emissary there for negotiations raised the ridge of bone that served him as an eyebrow. "You mean you're going to try and recruit him?"

The Mayor gave one of those great big campaign smiles. "You see, certain specialists are far too rare and sought after not to cultivate when you've got a chance to get a new one indebted to you. Just like a rogue Slayer, if you can get your evil mitts on a good necromancer, do so! Err, I should say 'skilled' there instead of good, shouldn't I?"

The emissary nodded. "But when you are an evil politician (isn't that phrase redundant?) who relies upon the undead, having a friendly necromancer about is just too useful an opportunity to ignore, I suppose."

"Exactly!" Wilkins agreed affably, then turned to his lieutenant. "Snyder, relay my compliments to the investigation team, and instruct our people to begin doing things like arranging to have certain materials lying about, bodies in good condition available for study, manuals, etc; be prepared to lose records of any that just happen to go missing, leave a prominent schedule out so the promising young dissection artist can see that certain hours are always available for him to sneak in and perform his works in private, and so on."

Snyder nodded and bowed out, leaving the mayor to his negotiations.

Xander and the other Scoobies would no doubt have been surprised to learn that shortly after they started learning practical surgery, the demons at the morgue were under orders from the Mayor to LET THEM IN!

Unsupervised, even. Because, as the mayor said, necromancers were a skittish lot, prone to flee if they ever got observed at their work.

I O I O I

The first day of school parents and children swarmed the grounds. But one particular set, an older man in a trenchcoat and a teenage blonde girl with good proportions, stood apart from the rest - not so much for the way they were dressed, but for the intensity of their focus.

"Are you sure we should be doing this, Merrick?" the girl hefted her school bag as though unfamiliar with one, despite clearly being athletic. "What about my previous duties?"

Despite having trained as a vampire slayer, this was different. She eyed the candy cane dotted lane they had walked up with suspicion.

"Yes, Polly." The man who had trained her spoke gravely, eyes on the school, mind contemplating the energy source they already knew lay within. His voice was a serious half-whisper. "The Council has received word of a budding necromancer on the Hellmouth, and that's too dangerous a combination to ignore. That is why you, the Slayer, are to investigate. Lothos can wait. He's been around long enough at this point one more year can't hurt anything."

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Yes, the Mayor killed Oz. War has casualties, and sometimes you might lose an ally before ever learning they could have helped you.

And nowhere could I find a name for the Slayer who came before Buffy, so I decided to name her Polly. I have a copy of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie sitting atop my DVD player right now, and from it I note Buffy Summers clearly got called during the middle of a school year.

They retroed her acts in the movie back to her freshman year for the TV show, and I'm fine with that. But here, at the beginning of it, the previous Slayer is still alive and functioning. For the sake of argument this Slayer, Polly, will look like the actress from the film, while Buffy can appear as she did in the series.

And, this one having been raised a Slayer, she'll act a bit more like Kendra.

BTW, I've never actually seen, nor heard of, a story in this genre using the pre-Buffy Slayer as a character before, so it's possible I scored a first. 


	25. Chapter 25

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Twenty-Five

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Absently stepping around a small cluster of overweight, pimply girls with glasses who were obviously new to hanging around the fringes, trying hard not to be seen, Polly was in sensory overload.

The reason for this was very simple, being awash in kids her own age was a new experience for her. Being raised as a Potential Slayer was akin to a very private school run by some of the strictest Catholic nuns. In fact many of the Potentials who did not become true Slayers ended up taking their vows.

Ties between the Catholic Church and the Watcher's Council were deep and went back for ages. Also, that way Potentials past the age where they could be Called could still serve the Council, offering their services as holy support playing backup to the field units.

It was all very serious and professional, which was why this giggling gaggle of schoolkids came as such a shock to her, as it was entirely outside the realm of her personal experience.

But, while it rattled her, she certainly wasn't about to show it.

Although there was more there to rattle the Slayer than ordinary school life, she didn't have the experience to know it. The first day of school opened up with a big assembly, wherein the entire student population got gathered in a big amphitheater where Principal Flutie made some remarks, then released them out into a big school fair taking up all of first period, unique starting this year.

Polly had never been to a Ren Fair, but she had certainly read enough books about the period to know her history, even put names to the outfits she was seeing as students manned booths, sold food, even put on plays while other groups performed old dances, sang archaic songs or played instruments.

In this, Polly was not alone, as a good deal of the students were shocked at the new entertainment this year as the various school groups petitioned for new members by showing off their skills. But none of them had any reason to suspect how much this owed to a certain conversation had among a small body of future students earlier that summer.

FLASHBACK

"A dance troupe," Marcie announced suddenly, to the surprise of those who knew her, drawing most of the attention to her presence, right in the wake of the successful false death of the candy witch.

Although the response was generally, "Huh?"

"A dance troupe or a theater company, something like Riverdance," Marcie expounded. "You know, for our group of 'partial Scoobs'? We need something where we can get a large group of people together and pretend not to be in charge of it. That way anyone looking for who is behind it doesn't find us, but whoever we pretend is in charge."

"Okay, granted, but how does a dance company do anything about teaching people to hunt vampires?" Jesse inquired.

"Nothing, on the surface," Marcie explained. "That's the beauty of it. We can all pretend together that we don't know anything about the night life. But we have a stage hand, or other 'mysterious figure' infiltrate the dance company to break the news to all of the members one-by-one. We can deny whatever person we use as some fly-by-night figure striking out at a random group, without any actual connection to us. But, once let in on the secret, members don't forget because they've got the rest of the company there to subtly reinforce that knowledge."

"How big a group are you thinking of?" Cathy wondered.

"As big as we can get it," Marcie shrugged.

Amy was already looking around their group. "We've got the core of a decent company already: two skilled male dancers, four female. Trading off who dances, sings or plays instruments, we've got enough to teach the rest of whomever we recruit, and act as stars during the performances."

"Not that I'm not flattered," Marcie asked, looking askance at the bard, "but what makes you think we'd be the stars? I was thinking of blending nicely into the background, just a few faces among many." And, dang it hurt! But that was what she'd been planning, mostly because she figured it would be easy.

Besides, all the comic books agreed it was safer to do it that way.

Amy laughed, a delighted, joyful response that had nothing of mockery in it, just simple joy over the delightful wrinkles of life. "Simple: Stage presence. The same thing that puts Cordy in charge of so many equally pretty, equally fashionable, equally rich girls her age. No one else our age is going to have half the confidence in ourselves we do. They can't. It's not possible. No one else can do the things we do, or match their skills to as many situations as we do, or face their own terrible fears the way we do. People worried about pimples and dates are just on a different level than those of us who are trying to save lives on a daily basis. There's no comparison. No matter how hard we try to blend in, we're going to stand out."

Both girls eyes tracked over to Xander. The boy looked good. Even aside from the new muscles, the new and improved Xand-man was increasingly drool-worthy in the girls' eyes. A nice car, good clothes (based on Cordy's day of fashion advice) and all that was nice, but what really made the greatest difference to all of them was the increased confidence he felt inside that mirrored itself outside.

There was no way to pretend this boy was a social outcast anymore. For that matter, with his new athletic build it was obvious he'd be encouraged to join a sports team or two.

Eyes then tracked, without speaking, over to Willow. It had been a few weeks since Xander and Willow had acknowledged their attraction for each other and it was obvious to all the girls how Willow thought that life couldn't get much better. Xander had been doing all the affectionate things that new boyfriends do with the skills of a refined lady's man inherited from his ancestor. They were teasing and flirting with each other constantly.

Once, Xander had mentioned Willow's penchant for baking apologies made candy magic oddly appropriate for her. The young woman had blushed slightly at the compliment then threw her arms around his neck, peppering his face with kisses - And Willow had spoken to all of the girls in blushing whispers about how his kisses made her knees weak and her toes curl.

The two of them were sweeter on each other than anything the candy witch had yet baked. Willow's mood was so high that it took a while for her to notice that Jesse was still giving her odd looks on occasion.

Jesse had not matured as fast as the rest of them and was still struggling at times over accepting that his childhood friend Willow had a gender.

Regardless, no way was anyone pretending this was a normal angst-filled teen romance. And those two were just the most obviously changed pair of their little group. Amy was nothing like her former pale shadow of a self, and the others would surely follow (provided they had any decent ancestors at all - which, as it later turned out, they did. Pretty stellar ones, in fact).

"Let's face it, we're going to stand out." Amy spread her hands helplessly, before cocking her head thoughtfully to the side. "Now, standing out can be good or bad, and personally I'd rather we take advantage of it to make ourselves the stars rather than be outcast goofballs who get tossed out of our own troupe!"

"I have to admit you've got a point there," Marcie agreed, secretly pleased that she'd not have to blend into the background, as she'd thought.

Willow had been typing away in the background. Satisfied with the information she'd brought up, she let out a little cry of triumph. "Ok! Adding together all of the freshmen who are taking band, chorus or drama classes at our school this year, I see sixty-four names, not including ourselves. How's that?"

Amy was mentally doing some math. "Well, the largest permanent groups I'm acquainted with are about the size we've already got: two guys, four girls. Only the gypsies had larger full time performance groups in my day; other than the monasteries, of course."

"So, you can't do it?" Jesse raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

"Don't be silly, of course I can!" she sang gaily. "I'm talking about permanent troupes! For temporary occasions we got whole villages dancing and singing. People PARTICIPATED in their music back then! I've organized hundreds of dancers and dozens of instruments of every possible combination! Whatever people had on hand or knew how to use! The only difference here is getting these to be 'performance' type numbers instead of everybody jumping in. They have a different flavor to the setup. What you guys go to a theater to see is more of what I consider 'Court style' entertainment, and most of what I like to do best is Folk. But I can arrange any style of performance you like."

"So, how would you divide up the sixty-four?" Xander queried.

Amy shrugged, unconcerned. "Two male leads, two female, eight to sixteen male 'chorus' dancers, and matching female, an equal number of musicians, add in some specialists and replacements in case any of the main players get sick or injured. Yeah, that's a pretty solid company right there. I've seen great things done with groups a third as big."

"We could do Riverdance with a group that size," her mother breathed, incidentally causing her daughter to grin.

"Oh, give us a few years, and I'll make something more Riverdance than Riverdance!" the blonde merry maid asserted.

Willow was sitting excited in her chair, practically bouncing out of it. "And by signing up for those classes, they've all technically agreed!"

"That does make the magic so much simple," Xander pondered.

"Huh? Magic?" Jesse was startled.

Xander tossed off an easy and accurate explanation to his friend. "Jess, we are all pretty incredible fourteen-year-olds. That's not something easy to hide, except among other exceptional fourteen-year-olds. So, if we were to sneak out in the dead of night to the homes of those sixty four freshmen, and give THEM some of the same hypno-training WE'VE been getting... well, even if it only applies to music, suddenly instead of trying to hide our talents in those areas like bonfires among weeds, we'd be bonfires among bonfires."

"Much simpler," Amy agreed. "We'll still stand out, but standing out among others who are standing out, the difference doesn't seem so big. And if we hold off on all of the combat and magic downloads until we can be sure they can be trusted with them..."

"We've got our partial Scoobs," Jesse saw at last, nodding.

"Mostly." Xander cautioned. "Remember, it is intrinsic in the 'partial Scoob' experiment to find people who can be trusted after being introduced to the idea of monsters in town. So at some point, sooner rather than later, they have to be let in on that little secret so we can see how they deal with it."

"And, to avoid scaring them to death for no reason, at the time we let them in on the big secret of the nightlife in town we'd also better be prepared to give them some idea of how to deal with it," Cathy added her own caution, leveling them with a direct stare, "Because otherwise we'd be driving some into the enemy camp - terrified people seeing no way to deal with it except to 'join the winning side'. I'm sure that's where so many of our horrible cops came from."

"You have a point," Xander admitted.

"So, we have to decide what is an acceptable 'minimum kit' to carry in order to be both aware of the dangers of this town, and minimally outfitted to deal with that," Willow resumed.

"Not really," Jesse kicked back and lolled his head to one side. "Think about it. What you've described is pretty much the situation my mom put my sisters into: aware of the problem, but NOT outfitted to fight it."

"Yes, but she did add a few things, like the Xander-Dex and magic in general, that I'm not quite willing to let just anyone have," Willow chewed a finger.

"Point," Jesse conceded.

Xander sat up, looking seriously around his circle of friends. "But we've got tons of ideas we've outgrown and are no longer using: the idea of having Jesse's sisters pilot remote control planes hunting undead, for one. Using fireworks to burn vampires for another. Those are good ideas, but no longer the main thrust of our efforts. So if we share them..."

Lights seemed to go on all around him.

"Small groups of demon hunters could crop up all over town," Willow breathed, impressed, before bursting out into a huge, warm smile.

Cathy was nodding. "That could seriously complicate the mayor's efforts to repopulate the local demonic underworld."

"Better still, we'll have the presence of other demon hunting groups to disguise our activities." Amy chirped. "Best place to hide a needle is not in a haystack, but in among a pile of other needles."

END FLASHBACK

I O I O I

School was, well, school. Having been across campus enough time under guise of arranging their schedules while actually plotting their secret boltholes, weapons caches and escape routes, the campus was no mystery to a certain set of teens.

Heck, a detailed map had been part of one of their hypnotism downloads! It was just too useful to know one's territory for that home turf advantage, especially things that did not occur on any student handouts, like the location of service tunnels, equipment lockers and so on.

You had to know where to find the tanks for the fire sprinkler system if your resident holy person were going to bless them, after all!

They'd also done an exhaustive search for bugs and microphones, both of the mundane and magical sort. Because they had to know what level of surveillance was there if they were going to circumvent it. But the place was reassuringly lax.

The students around campus were the typical mix of returning older years and gullible young faces shining with newness, easily picked out by their confusion and the class schedules gripped in their hands as they searched for room numbers.

On course, on the first day of school was also when the "We Hate Cordelia Chase" club's final revenge got revealed at last.

It took a while to be noticed, as Queen C and her Cordettes were anxious not to be seen. Still, Willow's face was white as she stumbled into the newspaper office crammed into the second floor above the school's museum, which was also the old gymnasium, too small to be used anymore. The school newspaper took up the entire second floor, and was the only course held in that building, but felt cramped for all of that.

By carefully arranging their schedules the Scoobies had managed to get all of their classes together, even if that came with a minor sacrifice or two. They were going to take woodshop, but with all of the rescheduling they'd done for honors courses, the school newspaper was the only class they could take in third period, literally the only one left that had openings. And the class had openings for a reason, the entire school newspaper staff had died end of last year. They were still looking for a replacement teacher, by last report.

Still, being the only ones in the building as yet, and having double checked it for bugs, the news could at last be talked about, as Marcie immediately burst forth into laughter. "HaHa! Did you SEE them!!"

"How could I NOT?" Amy giggled.

"I didn't mean to go so far," Willow whispered.

Jesse casually unfolded himself into a seat, managing to look suave while doing so. "So, who did what?"

Xander raised a hand, perching on the edge of the vacant teacher's desk. "I presume we are talking of the minor curses that were so obviously placed on Cordy and her Cordettes? In that case I was the one responsible for casting one earlier this summer that doubled their weight. Seeing as how it's magical, no amount of dieting would take off even an ounce."

Jesse nodded, pouring himself a glass of what turned into soda before he drank it. He toasted Xander with the glass. "Excellent!"

Amy soothed a mourning Willow, rubbing her arm. "Oh, c'mon! That part is actually not so bad! They were underweight before. Now they're slightly over. At that size they'd fit right in during the middle ages, where wealthy women were expected to be a little plump."

"Of course, during today's stick figure fashions, they stand out like mules at a classic dance," Jesse snorted, before sitting up. "Okay! Who else did what? We all saw the collection of minor curses they were under."

Willow raised a timid hand. "I halved their eyesight. That's where they all got the thick glasses they are wearing. No contacts are possible at that level of correction."

Xander cocked his head, explaining to the group at large, "They've mocked her since kindergarten about being a 'four-eyes nerd in training'."

"I caused them to break them out in the thick layers of pimples they've got." Amy swirled her long hair as she happily declared her part.

"My contribution to this masterpiece was to give them frequent, and fairly nasty, odor problems." Jesse humbly placed a hand on his chest.

"I ruined their hair, so it's all limp and greasy, no matter how shampooed," Marcie confessed. At first they'd all been surprised this serene and churchlike girl could take actions that hurt someone, until she'd pointed out that her great ancestress was a warrior, and the God they served was fully capable of raining fire and brimstone to incinerate entire cities at need.

She wouldn't hurt the innocent, but a blow upside the head to the wicked to hopefully get them to regret their actions and change their ways lay fully within her purview. As did eliminating those that would not.

Leaning back, Jesse summarized, saluting the room, "Total effect: they have gone from the absolute top of the social pyramid to the absolute bottom in the space of a single summer. That attractiveness that was always their stock in trade is now gone. Hmph, as a mere side effect: doubling their weight caused them to no longer fit their super-fashionable clothes."

The group then grew silent, none of them daring to speak of the previous week's conversations in unsecured surroundings. Minors spells were nothing. It seemed like half the town had connections to the occult. So while they did not advertise their abilities in that department, neither did they think those were too unusual, so so long as they concealed the extent, they were fine.

However, the other business they'd discussed was a different story. The old concept of 'Secret' vs 'Top Secret'. The fact they knew spells was a secret and would be hidden, but could be discovered without destroying them, so could be talked over in hushed tones during moments of privacy.

The fact they ran a secret, underground resistance group opposing the local government and their undead toadies was even more secret, and would not be discussed outside of the most secure surroundings, which meant one of their heavily warded homes or bases.

Outside of that, not a word. That was the rule. And it was a good one, as it was possible to be overheard even when you thought you were alone.

And so it proved, as a tall man in a grey overcoat stepped out from behind some overstuffed file cabinets, obviously preoccupied as he returned from investigating his small office and giving no sign if he'd overheard. "Ah, I see you are all on time. Very good. My name is Professor Merrick, and I'll be your faculty advisor and editor this year."

There came some thumps on the narrow staircase behind them, and a blonde girl appeared clutching a bookbag in one hand just as the bell rang. "Sorry," she apologized. "This class is a little hard to find."

"Indeed it is," Professor Merrick agreed. "Students, allow me to introduce Polly Summers, a new transfer student this year. Now if you'll be seated, I'll take roll and we can decide who shall be our columnists for this publication."

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Ain't I a stinker? 


	26. Chapter 26

The Knights of Scooby  
Chapter Twenty-Six

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Cordelia sized up her target. Bad hair? Check. Bad complexion? Double check. Pimple city was putting it mildly. Overweight? Wow was that checked! Badly dressed? Well, it was obvious the poor creature had SOME fashion sense, but it was just as obvious the Sunnydale Mall (which had been inexplicably closed a few weeks this summer) didn't stock cutting edge fashions in her size, which crossed the line of simply overweight and lay somewhere between 'fat' and 'Jabba the Hutt'. The coke bottle bottom glasses and frequent gas outbursts were simply icing on the cake. This person was a perfect target. Cordelia would have cheerfully enjoyed shredding her, giving the poor, unpopular girl daily lashings with her acid tongue until she had such a miserable reputation she'd never escape it without moving out of town.

The trouble was, this girl was herself.

Cordelia broke down crying in front of the mirror of the PE locker room after school, just as she'd been doing in frequent fits since the problems started back in mid-summer.

Everything she'd once loved in life had deserted the poor rich girl. Her pride in herself, the respect of her peers and the approval of parents, even her carefully cultivated insults. Cordelia was finding out that having a waspish tongue was only fun when you were at the top of the food chain. When you were at the bottom it had a habit of offending those above you, and hurting them only got you more hurt delivered in turn.

Which was why, as proof of this, she was currently nursing a black eye and swollen lip from where one of the boyfriends of the girls she'd been insulting had beaten her up, and the reason she'd been staring in the mirror, applying first aid supplies clumsily, in the first place.

"Ow! Whatever happened to 'don't hit a lady?'" Harmony asked, nursing her own bruises obtained in a similar scuffle.

"It died out along with chivalry. Feminism now teaches us that punching a girl is the same as punching anyone else. So if they deserve it, sock it to 'em!" A third member of the Cordettes observed unhappily.

I O I O I

"What have you found?" Merrick asked without preamble as Polly appeared in the newspaper offices at the end of the day of classes, closing file drawers to give his attention to her report.

The girl replied, unruffled by his short tone as she was accustomed to it, and taking orders. "Nothing, yet. I am unfamiliar with the environment and do not know what signs to be alert for in hunting prey of this type."

A normal girl would have said something more like, "I don't even know what I'm looking for."

Merrick gave her an affirmative grunt, grateful they taught Slayers to be more precise in their use of language. They both knew WHAT they were looking for. Finding it was another issue entirely. Necromancers were a skittish lot at the best of times.

That was why they were infiltrating the school in the first place. Magic users could be assumed to know a thing or two about Slayers. The appearance of normalcy of a young girl attending classes was a good cover for approaching a target who might flee at the slightest warning of being hunted.

That Polly was out of her depth was expected. They did not teach Slayers to operate in this type of environment; not that there was no need, far from it, but it was impossible to get the majority of them to focus on their training if they had too many distractions.

Distractions such as public education abounded in.

Still, a few sacrifices had to be made when the target was of significant importance. He reopened the file drawer he had been working on. Really, these cabinets were such a convenient design. Open it one way it was perfectly ordinary, open it with a certain spell under your breath and you had entirely different contents. He could, and had, concealed his entire Watcher library in among the newspaper files with no chance for an idiot to stumble upon them. Really, his patron on the council had come through on this one.

Merrick retrieved a file, speaking as he added to its contents. "As you are well aware, simple minded undead can be hunted in fairly simple ways. Using yourself as bait is a classic, as is patrolling their hunting grounds. But the users of dark magic are more intelligent and more alert. Fortunately for us, as that means sooner or later the local magic community will become aware of their newest member. You'll just have to establish contact with them, discretely of course. Pretend to be some nervous thing in search of a love potion or good luck charm to assist you on certain class exams."

Polly gave a serious nod more at home on a soldier than a schoolgirl. "So where do I find the local magic users?"

The Watcher winced as he replied, "It would be easier to tell you where they weren't. Half this town appears to have connections to the occult, though a disturbing portion remain unaware of it."

"Heavy magical support, then?" Polly surmised. According to stories she had read out of the Watcher Diaries that would make the mission a cakewalk, if it were true (though it rarely ever was).

Merrick almost laughed. "Unfortunately not. Most experienced magic users avoid this place, both for the presence of a large number of demons and the dark energy. But there does seem to be an appalling number of amateurs and dabblers, who no doubt have a high proportion of those experimenting with the dark as here it is so easy to reach. So I would count on as much magical opposition as support - if not more so."

Polly winced. As useful as magical support could be, opposition by magic was just as bad, if not worse!

Glad she was correctly reading the scenario, Merrick gave her a sober nod acknowledging that and continued, "It doesn't help that this summer a small scale magical war was fought in this town, demonologists and a shaman on one side, and a candy witch on the other - at a minimum. A war like that one makes everyone magical keep their heads down for a while, for fear of being drawn into a second round. Also, the lingering traces permeate this village almost as much as Hellmouth energy, making our divinations return false positives. That is why we are here to explore on foot. But it does complicate a normally routine contact. Getting friendly magical backup has never been as much of an issue before."

Privately, the man expertly hid his gladness that her conditioning had taken hold so she was not wondering why the Watcher's Council did not field more magical support for the Slayers on their own, because even he had difficulty understanding all of the politics involved in that decision.

"What of the rest of the newspaper staff talking about minor curses?" Polly asked seriously. "Could they be in our local witch coven?"

Merrick dismissed her concerns with a disdainful sniff. "Hmph. I know a spell for aura sight. I've been arguing for years that it ought to be taught to all Field Watchers. Reading auras can tell you most things about a person or demon, and you know more about quantum physics than our little class does about magic: you realize that it exists, and that it affects you, but have no understanding of what or how it is doing whatever it does. They are the same with regards to magic. No, they will be a concern for us only so far as getting this paper published on time. Their auras show they are perfectly ordinary, for this town anyway. They must have hired out to some local witch to cast those curses for their petty revenge. But that is part of what I speak of: a surprising portion of the local population at least know of magic, and who they can get to cast minor spells, even if they themselves are perfectly ordinary. You might do well to ingratiate yourself with them, actually, as they represent exactly the sort of person you want to emulate on your hunt - A person who is aware that magic exists, and occasionally hires it, but does not practice any herself. Befriend them and they may even share their sources."

Again Polly nodded in that serious, out of place way for a beautiful girl her age. "What are the risks of faulty information and ambush?"

"Trivial, at best," Merrick answered absently, finished updating his file and returning it to the cabinet. "While not as adept as someone who can see auras naturally, my spell is perfectly capable of picking out casual magic users by their auras. Aura cloaking spells do exist, but are obscure and the difficulties are so extreme only a few paranoids become any good at them. I do not feel you are in any reasonable danger children their age have become adept at them. The amount of work involved is simply beyond the grasp of your average teenager - but particularly entertainment glutted Americans."

I O I O I

In their secret underground lair Jesse was leaning up against a wall beside a door waiting for the others. His usual playful air absent. "I take it you saw?"

"How could I miss it?" Cathy asked as she came up at the head of the girls.

Xander came out of the washroom Jesse had been guarding. "Ok, we all know the other kid in our newspaper class is possessed by a demon. It's obvious. It's all over her aura like one of those tacky, great big, blinking neon signs from the fifties, only reading 'demon possessed girl here!' And our editor? I've never seen anyone so touched by dark magic, and considering we live on the mouth of Hell, that's saying something."

"To be fair, we don't have many experienced magic users here," Willow amended. Dang! There went her plan to 'accidentally' stumble in on Xander taking his after-sports bath again.

Amy bounded into the hall gladly. "Hey guys? Great news! Did you know that the Smith twins are into cutting? Remember when we were in fourth grade they were the most popular girls in sixth? Apparently they have fallen from that exalted state and their lives as unpopular juniors are so depressing they cut themselves in twisted attempts to make it worse and therefore feel better about themselves. Don't ask me how that works."

"Why is Rachel and Shelly being depressingly goth great news?" Marcie raised her head from her Bible to inquire, more than a touch puzzled.

Amy relaxed back into her chair as they reached their favorite conference room. "Simple. Those healing cantrips we can't practice, because we don't have any wounds that need healing? Well, they cut up their flesh regularly, making small wounds about the size we could cure with cantrips - so of their own volition they create the raw material we need to practice our healing magic on. So if we could somehow enter into an agreement to cure them, they'd get to do more of their thing without long term cost, and we'd get to improve at our healing magic. If they're going to be doing it anyway, we might as well learn a little medicine from it, right? I mean, where's the harm?"

Cathy pondered her daughter's proclamation, then added, "It makes me wonder, I've lost track of so many friends that I'm not even tied into a good rumor mill anymore, but do you guys know anyone on the bondage scene? I just thought if we could get involved in the after-event cleanup we could be dealing with cuts and bruises, abrasions and burns and all sorts of minor injuries, learning how to heal them and expanding our medical spells."

"Fairly limited trauma medicine," Jesse evaluated, thinking the matter over carefully while his pose screamed 'indolent teen'. "We won't be learning to fix broken bones or organ damage... well, unless the people are so extreme they are basically demons, in which case we'd have to kill them. Nor will this help us study how to deal with various diseases or poisonings. It's all fairly simple thug club comedy cleanup, but useful to know how to correct all the same."

"Distasteful, but necessary. I see your point." Xander agreed. "Magic has an advantage over the regular medicine we are practicing up on in that it's fast. Sealing over cuts in seconds instead of just assisting the body's ability to do it, which is pretty often fairly slow. Knitting flesh takes time, normally."

"And this way we also get practice on our diagnostics." Cathy offered. "We meet up with the bondage subject in her clothes and see which of her wounds we can identify just using the spell. Then she tells us, and we get our test graded, so to speak, learning where we have to improve."

"It's all surface tissue damage, nothing internal." Willow evaluated to get her own take on matters firmly settled in her mind. "Still, it's not as if we won't pick up those types of injuries if we get in a fight. It's not life-threatening, but knowing how to fix that stuff still isn't bad. The standard 'beaten up by jocks' thing we used to go through had plenty of that, so we can assume other combat injuries would include at least some of that type of injury. And the help learning our diagnostic spells would certainly be welcome."

"Actually, as far as the organ stuff?" Jesse offered his own idea to the bunch. "Let's find us some smokers and drinkers and do work on their lungs and livers! It's not uber-serious stuff at our age, yet, but it's a start, a fairly minor one, but that's exactly what our cantrips need at this stage - we're just starting out."

"We'd have to develop lung and liver curing cantrips, but you're right, that's one way to study improving them." Xander concurred, before slapping his hands together. "Okay! Now that that's all settled, and the Scoobies are all gathered in our secret underground headquarters at the start of the first week of school ready for the year to begin, and having just heard each other's progress reports. It is now time for the big issue to get addressed!"

One or two mystified looks met more cunning ones.

Xander settled the whole question by spreading his hands and saying, "C'mon! We all want to continue on as heroes, and the area definitely needs us. But we don't want to get caught using the candy paradigm again. So how are we going to do it? What is our playbook going to look like from now on?"

"How about we take a page out of the book of my ancestor and start robbing the rich to give to the poor?" Amy suggested.

"No," Xander shook his head. "I like the Robin Hood idea, I really do; but his paradigm really depended on having a safe ground, in his case Sherwood Forest, on which he was effectively invulnerable. He knew his home ground so well and had such a large force of elite, armed men to defend it that no one else dared to come against him there. Our country would just napalm the place. No, for our situation I think my ancestor had the right idea."

"And now I think is the perfect time to shout 'Hey, look! I've developed a Batarang!'" Xander volunteered, with a big grin, holding up a black boomerang of the distinctive shape.

"Nice, but I don't think you should really use it." Willow disapproved.

"Oh? Why not. You said I should be leaning this direction." The boy was honestly puzzled that his great reveal of their new theme had failed to get the vast surge of approval he was looking for.

He even knew who was to get each costume!

Marcie volunteered the answer to his confusion. "True, but think about it. If you start appearing as Batman they will at least look for a Bruce Wayne. What are the clues from the comic books? He keeps his secret lair in a cave, which you do. He is uncommonly rich, which you are, and he lost his parents to street crime, which you did. You do not have a great deal of company in filling out those criteria. No, it would make their search uncomfortably narrow and put you on a very short list of suspects."

Amy contemplatively strummed her recently crafted lute, fetched from beneath the table where she stored it. "You're right about the forest, we don't have a home ground to defend, unless you want to count our Candy Caves - which we don't want to because the whole point is to not let anyone else know they exist..."

"Which is a great reason never to call them Candy Caves again. Because that just gives away too much information," Jesse interjected. "Anyone hearing that knows they are underground, and can probably figure out they were created by our recent Candy Witch, may she rest in peace," he put his hand over his heart in mock solemnity and cast a wink over towards Willow.

She giggled.

He really was no different, well, not much anyway, than before he'd met his great ancestor. He was just a great deal smoother and more successful a flirt and tease.

"A point," Amy conceded. "But the problem with a character like Zorro, or Batman, or even the Scarlet Pimpernel nowadays is that other people have read those comics or heard those stories, too. They know the profile to look for. Wealthy (which we are, no denying that, and any government agency that chooses to investigate, like a mayor's office, will find that out pretty quick), laid-back (again, that's our history) people going out under cover of darkness to fight evil. Given our society's obsession with forensics, they'd solve who our secret identities are pretty quick. Then it's curtains for us."

"Aha! But there IS an answer for that!" Xander sat up at attention, crowing, "There is a reason why my distant ancestor never got caught, you know."

"Oh? Do tell?" Now he had the attention of the entire audience of Scoobies.

He got up, the more effective to tell this story, "Simply put: he could be in two places at once. My ancestor was never caught because he always had an alibi, usually of the very best sort, often vouched for by the very people he would be fighting against. And the reason they vouched for him was because he WAS there in their presence when this masked bandit was off elsewhere putting his evil troops to embarrassed shame and killing off his demons."

Everyone sat up and began to pay him strict attention.

"How?" Amy and Jesse chorused, leaning forward in professional interest.

Xander smiled. "Ah. There is, in the Los Angeles area, not far from the La Brea Tar Pits actually, a set of sacred Indian caves that were holy to the local tribes, only few dared to set foot therein. Well, those caves were right on Don Diego's land, and in fact his fireplace was built over one of their entrances, with a loose stone at the back. Kids explore everything, so when he was a young lad Zorro discovered this, and my beloved ancestor was like most boys and couldn't be restrained from going inside to explore. He'd gone through every corner before realizing they were held as a dread danger and avoided. But once he'd set out on his crusade against undead and demons, he needed a place to base himself out of that they could not reach."

"And his answer was these caves," Jesse concluded for him, in a somewhat shocking 'that's what I would have done - experienced veteran talking' tone of voice, his mannerisms undergoing a total change from laid back slacker to deadly warrior before relaxing once again to where it was hardly noticeable that the momentary switch was ever there.

'Then again, maybe he HAS changed?' Willow thought.

Xander nodded. "You're right. The energy of those caves judged you, and if you were not worthy of their help you got destroyed upon entering them. And being holy, it was evil and their minions the caves disagreed with. Before you ask, the local Indians loved Diego, and some of their shamans added spells to the caves so nothing evil can even find them, and stretched this so it applied to the servants of evil as well. So no sending posses of innocents to do the work of evil and apprehend you. The caves later got cloaked under additional illusions, then got sealed on Zorro's death. But I know how to reopen them."

"That gives us an unassailable ground," Cathy remarked curiously. "I thought you were arguing against the Robin Hood paradigm?"

"Too far away to cover the Hellmouth effectively," he dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "Besides, it's mostly an unimproved cave system, not exactly my idea of comfort. Resting on grass under trees in the sunshine is one way to rob from the rich; squatting in dark, damp caves is something else. Not my idea of fun. My ancient ancestor did leave some training gear around there, and set up stalls to keep Tornado, but it's not exactly my idea of comfort all the same. No, I was suggesting them for an entirely different purpose than using as a sheltered home turf."

"And that would be?" Jesse inquired with a delicately raised eyebrow, the picture of cultured aristocracy (giving Willow the wiggins).

Xander grinned. "Those caves were what gave Zorro his power to be in two places at once. Attuning to the cave you made a special connection granting it power to create a double that, while temporary, was wholly and completely you. You even get the memories of what it's done while active. What's more, it can even be injured and, so long as it doesn't die, the next time you summon it your double will be at full health. Being made out of shadowstuff, the duplicate leaves no traces of itself, hair or blood or torn garments or anything else, behind. But it also can't withstand the light of day."

"How is that different from a golem?" Cathy inquired professionally. "A well crafted one can have strength and endurance far superior to the man who made it. For that matter, well made zombies can have limited human skills."

She ought to know, a good portion of the city services of Sunnydale were now run by zombies she'd created, while she collected the paychecks.

Xander nodded the point, but returned, still grinning, "But both of those are automatons acting on previously given sets of instructions. Magical robots, in other words. Now I'm not arguing that robots can't be useful, but they don't have the human cunning or ingenuity needed to become a figure like Zorro. The constant adaptation is what makes up the difference in that kind of activity, and any adaptation at all is impossible for an automaton. They do what they are told, nothing more. This doppleganger, so long as you remain true to the cause of righteousness, can run off to do things using your skills and abilities, including reasoning and memory. The only drawback is that you lose your ability to cast a shadow while it is active."

He gazed across the faces of his friends. "That's why Zorro always had a perfect alibi. You could effectively project yourself beyond your body and literally be in two different places at once. The real you didn't have a shadow while this was happening, which is why Zorro mostly appeared at night, when the spells to create a fake shadow weren't as difficult. So Don Diego could go to parties and look normal, and if he was distracted a bit from maintaining the spell to hold up a fake shadow, others were drunk, so he fit right in."

"What's the catch?" Cathy asked.

Others noticed Xander suddenly looking uncomfortable.

The oldest witch in the group smiled. "Proxy spells like that one always have a catch. I know a scrying method that creates an invisible, flying eye that can go for hundreds of miles, and whatever it sees, you see. Scrying from it is simple, easy and accurate. But it isn't a very popular method, because if anyone detects the eye and destroys it, you lose one of your own from the backlash. So, I repeat, what's the catch?"

"Well," Xander admitted, plainly unwilling to, "My ancestor said that when the shadow him died he nearly did from the shock, and it wasn't until the next new moon that he could cast a shadow again, and then another month before he could create another doppleganger."

"Well, that's not so bad, then," Cathy declared, shocking everybody. "What?" She answered their stares. "This double will only be doing what we would do if we didn't have it. So if it dies, we've seriously screwed up. Then there is the system shock, that at least has been survived once. That's a much better cost than just dying outright, as it gives you a chance to live through it. No, that's much better than losing an arm or a leg, as I'd been fearing. I'd guess the cave has some buffer mechanism that prevents you from dying outright. Like I said, all proxy spells always have costs like that."

She fluffed her hair, shaking it out, while casually expounding on her points. "If we go out in person, and die, we are dead. That's simple. If we go out and live, but some forensics specialist figures out 'you know, Clark is never around when Superman is', then they've got our identity and we're worse than dead, because they'll capture and torture us for information, and make sure to catch the rest of us. Furthermore, if we go out and die, or just leave drops of blood or hair behind, then they can take that body, or whatever DNA traces we left, figure out who we were, and catch the rest of us."

She gave the rest of the kids a sober look that was quite out of character for her usual demeanor. "No. This way, even if our clone dies, and we die too, we are still better off because even in death we won't betray our friends. I'd much rather my real self die in bed, or at a party, dropping dead of a heart attack than leave my corpse out on a battlefield where the enemy can wring it for secrets, or animate it as a zombie, or whatever, to fight against us."

No one said anything about it being a little hypocritical for her not to want to be animated as a zombie, considering how many she had active at that point. But they could see her idea about not wanting to be used against the group.

Xander tapped the table. "I'll go out this weekend to activate those caves."

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

This was a difficult chapter to write, because of the very things they are talking about here: how are they going to operate as heroes, now that the Candy Witch is officially dead, and how are they going to hide their secret identities when (not if) the enemy comes looking. Because they do talk about a very real problem, in that other people have read the comic books, too.

And we, as a society, are obsessed with forensics. Everything is labeled, numbered and measured to the ninth degree, with experts ready to study any glob of spit left behind. And how do you get in dramatic fight scenes without the heroes ever getting wounded?

You don't. Then, if they can be identified by any trace of DNA left behind, they are hosed. Their identities known and hunted by a bureaucracy that will never forget, nor forgive, a rebellion against it.

So I had to invent an answer, and came up with this method. 


End file.
